


Hell was the Journey but it Brought me Heaven

by SlytherinTeam



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Rare Pairings, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:27:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25706629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlytherinTeam/pseuds/SlytherinTeam
Summary: Hating magic is Petunia’s way to deal with the fact that deep down she loves magic and envies those who wield it.Hating muggles is Severus’s way to deal with the fact that his muggle father rejects him and the powerful, wealthy, pure-bloods in his house at Hogwarts look down on him.She and him? They have more in common than they think.So, what will happen when a time traveling squib rewrites history by playing matchmaker?
Relationships: Petunia Evans Dursley/Severus Snape
Comments: 11
Kudos: 45





	1. Prologue: Venutia Spindle's Story

Venutia Spindle seemed to have it all: pureblood lineage, family wealth, natural beauty. But there was one thing that she didn’t have: magic.

And that one thing she didn’t possess, that one thing that was entirely out of her control, would prove to shape her life more than anything else, having dire consequences.

The Spindle family belonged to the Sacred Twenty Eight and in all their years of prominence, they never once had to face the scandal of giving birth to a squib, that was, until Venutia came along.

Up until the age of 11, Venutia had been coddled and loved, just like her siblings. But when they got the Hogwarts letters and she didn’t, her entire world came crashing down.

She lost her parents' love, she lost everything. Lord Voldemort had been defeated and the wizarding world was changing but her family held on tight to prejudice and tradition. A squib was no better than a muggle and no one could know of their family shame. 

So, they did what many prominent English wizarding families in the same predicament did. They shipped Venutia off to an orphanage somewhere in the UK, very far away from them and told all of their acquaintances that their precious girl had died a tragic death during their trip abroad.

Most squib children sent to these orphanages integrated into the muggle world and never looked back. Why would they? In their eyes, the wizarding world was cruel and exclusionary. And besides, why be a poor downcast squib in the wizarding world when you could be a hotshot in the muggle world?

See, people forget that even though squibs can’t use wands to cast spells, they can still use magical items. People underestimate just how advantageous life as a squib can be. There was actually a rumor that one of the squib boys from Venutia’s orphanage had managed to get his hands on a bottle of felix felicis, the liquid luck potion and used it to win the lottery and become a millionaire in the muggle world.

Venutia had a different fate, one that would push her towards straddling both worlds, a constant tight rope walk. She didn’t choose such a path; someone else had put her on that path but she did choose to accept it. If she hadn’t been placed upon such a path, she wondered where she would even be now. All it took was one person to set her on her course, giving her a life purpose and a mission.

This destiny materialized on Venutia’s eighteenth birthday, when she legally became an adult and would have to pick a path anyway. She would never forget that day, it was like being hollow for seven years and then suddenly becoming solid and full again.

_“You’re Venutia Spindle, a squib who was born into the sacred Spindle Family. You were cheated out of your destiny, your future, but I’m here to tell you that you can change that. My name is Alabaster Thistle. I’m a wizard and I work to help squibs like yourself.” The tall wavy-haired man wearing all black spoke._

_Venutia had screamed when she first saw the man. He had been wearing a mask, which he promptly took off to speak to her but that didn’t stop her from cowering in the corner._

_“A… a wizard? You’re a….wizard.” Venutia had lived the first ten years of her life in the wizarding world, surrounded by wizards and witches. She should have felt safe and comfortable in that world, in the presence of magic people, but that sense of safety and comfort, that sense of home, was destroyed a long time ago. Wizards and witches could not be trusted, could not give unconditional love._

_“I know what you’re thinking.” He said. “You have no reason to trust me, my kind, even your own family, treated you terribly. But hear me out. My brother, Callistus, is a squib and he’s the reason why I do what I do. I broke away from my family for the way they treated him and I used my inheritance to set up a foundation, a foundation and a home for squibs rejected by their pureblood families.”_

_Venutia’s eyes widened. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing, that there were witches and wizards who cared about squibs, who were advocating on their behalf._

_Alabaster continued to explain to her. “We keep track of other squibs. I’ve known about you for a long time Venutia. When squibs in orphanages like you become of age, me or my brother will go and tell them about our foundation and home. We dream of a world in which squibs, muggles, wizards, witches and everyone else can accept one another and live in harmony. We believe every life has worth and value. And we devote a great deal of our time fighting against the especially cruel treatment that squibs in pureblood families receive. We don’t think squibs should be forced out of the wizarding world and into the muggle world, nor do we think muggle-born witches and wizards should be encouraged to leave the muggle world behind entirely and stay only in the magical world. We dare to imagine a world in which people of mixed birth can exist happily and wholly in both worlds.”_

_Up until this moment, Venutia planned to do what the vast majority of squibs did; enter the muggle world and never look back. But now, here was this stranger, this earnest, charismatic and truthfully quite handsome albeit older stranger, and a wizard no less, a kind wizard who acknowledged her as worthy of dignity, presenting her with another option._

_The emotions came flooding as if a dam in her heart had broken. The taste of Bertie Bott’s every flavor beans on her tongue, the smell of her father’s potions, the feeling of gliding through the air on the front of her mother’s broomstick, the portraits in the sitting room that moved and talked, the tales her older siblings shared about that incredible school they attended, they all came rushing back to her._

_Alabaster Thistle could see the longing and the burning passion in the young woman’s eyes. He was no seer but anyone could see that Venutia had a power and drive in her heart that would lead her to achieve great things._

_Venutia’s look of longing and hope turned abruptly into a raised-eyebrow look of skepticism. “So, if I go with you and join your foundation, what exactly will I be expected to do? Also, I was all set to get a regular muggle job and forget the wizarding world but if I join you, then I’m kind of being thrust back into it, aren’t I?”_

_Thistle smiled. The young woman was thoughtful and intelligent and he had no problem answering her questions._

_“We find abandoned squibs when they turn eighteen for two reason: one, to give them a home and a community, you will get to live for free with others like you, in dormitory style apartments fully funded by the foundation. Of course, you don’t have to live there but most choose to, due to their financial circumstances and because they genuinely like it, the sense of community. Two, to offer a job that furthers our foundation’s mission. If you live in our dormitory then you also work for us and we work with you. After a one month settling-in period, we meet with you to get to know you, your strengths, weaknesses, interests, etc and from there we decide what kind of position you would be best suited for. But ultimately, all of our jobs have the same end goal - fighting for equal rights.”_

_Thistle continued. “If you truly want to live only in the muggle world and leave the wizarding world behind, then I completely understand your reasons for doing so but in that case, life with the foundation won’t be an option for you. Squibs are children of witches and wizards so naturally, in fighting prejudice against them, we operate in the wizarding world.”_

_Again, the longing look returned to Venutia’s face. For seven years she denied it and now it was hitting her in the face; the wizarding world was just as much her world as it was her parents and siblings’ world. She had grown up in it and even once thought she was a part of it. For ten years, she knew nothing else. The realization slapped her in the face. She would never feel content living only the muggle world and she always knew that but she thought she would just have to suck it up._

_She had accepted a life of pining and longing. Somewhere along the way, the little girl who had wanted everything, had accepted the prospect of a future filled with nothing._

_Not anymore. “Alabaster Thistle, you have given me an offer I cannot refuse. I would love nothing more than to reclaim my place in the wizarding world by working for your foundation. Thank you. You have given me back the inner flame that I thought I had lost long ago.”_

_Alabaster Thistle was neither a seer nor a legilimens but he had to fight to keep his smile from turning into a smirk; he had seen her answer coming. Venutia Spindle may not have had magic but she was a pure Spindle through and through; proud, ambitious and full of desire. ___

__Now Venutia was twenty-one. She had been with the foundation for more than three years and just as she knew intuitively more than three years ago, this was her calling. Not only, did she find lifelong friends and a tight-knit chosen family, she also found work that she could pour her whole heart into._ _

__In the less than four years since she had joined, Venutia had proven herself a natural-born leader. She fearlessly went out into the wizarding world day after day, spreading the message of equality and she found that she had a real knack for giving riveting speeches. Those speeches inspired more than one piece of legislation that had passed recently, giving greater protection to squibs and muggle-born witches and wizards among others._ _

__It certainly didn’t hurt that she had started working shortly after the fall of the Dark Lord. While many old pureblood families like hers were still clinging to their ways, Venutia could see that the rest of the wizarding world was changing and changing rapidly. Most people didn’t want another dark lord to rise. Most people didn’t want to be accused of bigotry. Wizards and witches everywhere seemed eager to lend an ear to Venutia’s impassioned pleas for greater tolerance and understanding._ _

__Of course, Venutia’s work put her in danger, not just from pureblood supremacists in general, but most painfully, from her family especially. This was true for all the squibs from the old noble pureblood families working for the foundation. Most of their families had lied and said they died but by speaking publicly, they were exposing them. Assasination attempts were a very real and frightening reality for Venutia and her colleagues._ _

__But for the time being, assassination attempts and slander were the least of Venutia’s concerns. The young, whip smart, bright-eyed foundation worker had been given a task beyond her wildest imagination, a task that cemented her status as the most competent and capable person working for the foundation, but it was also a task that kept her up at night, worrying about everything that could go wrong._ _

_“Venutia, do you know what this is?” Alabaster held up a gold necklace with a large spherical charm that looked like the planet saturn._

_“It’s not a time-turner, is it?” She asked quizzically._

_Alabaster smiled with his eyes. “It is. I had a feeling you were well-read enough to recognize one.”_

_Venutia blushed a bit at the compliment. “Well, I know you’re busy Alabaster and you know I’m very busy with my duties these days as well. I don’t think you would invite me to your office just to show me a time-turner. So, I hope I’m not way off the mark or that I’m being presumptuous, but I’m guessing you want me to use it for something very important.”_

_A smirk was now planted on Alabaster’s face. He couldn’t help it; he delighted in how quick and effective Venutia was from the moment he had met her. “Precisely. I have a very important mission for you Venutia, something I believe that only you are capable of carrying out.”_

_Venutia tried very hard not to look smug as he said this. “I see. Please do tell me all the details then.”_

_“Of course.” Alabaster smiled graciously now. “Venutia, as I’m sure you know, time-turners are quite rare and generally they can only send you back in time three hours maximum. But this time-turner is different, exceptional, one could say. This time-turner is not for the recent past; this time-turner can send you back decades.”_

_Venutia gasped. “Alabaster, I know you get excited about rare magical items and artefacts but you’re not gullible. You’re one of the most intelligent and clear-thinking people I’ve ever met. You can’t actually believe that time travel into the distant past is possible! Where did you get that thing? How can you believe such blatant nonsense?”_

_Alabaster was not offended by Venutia’s outburst. He laughed as if amused. “Daring, headstrong, smart as a cookie but not always super open-minded or tactful. Venutia Spindle, if you were a witch at Hogwarts, you would undoubtedly be a Gryffindor.”_

_Although Venutia found Alabaster flattering, she did not appreciate how he was making light of the situation and insinuating that she was close-minded._

_Alabaster’s voice suddenly grew deep and serious. “Venutia, I assure you, this is not a joke nor is this a game. This time-turner is the real deal, one of, if not the only time turners in the world that can send a person back as far as decades. If this thing fell into the wrong hands, the consequences would be catastrophic. But...” He smiled. “Fortune has favored the good for once. This tool is in our hands and we must use it and then promptly destroy it.”_

_“Use it for what?” Venutia was still in a state of disbelief but she decided to play along. Alabaster’s ideas fascinated her even when they did sound crazy._

_He smiled the widest smile yet. “Venutia, my dear. Lorena Lovegood, known to be a true seer, most recently gave a prophecy: The female squib born at midnight in July during the full moon will travel back in time, unite the muggle flower who hates all wizard kind with the half-blood prince who loathes his muggle blood and together prevent the dark lord’s rise. Then the chosen boy and so many others will lead happy, whole lives and this time-turning will be more than justified._

_Venutia, who was sipping English breakfast tea from a delicate floral porcelain teacup, looked ready to spit it in Alabaster Thistle’s face. “Where did you hear that?”_

_The wizard’s smirk returned as he pulled out a newspaper clipping. “You read more books in a week than anyone I know, Venutia, but it would do you some good to keep up with the news as well.”_

_Venutia was flabbergasted, this prophecy, given by the well respected Lorena Lovegood, had been publicized._

_“If this is true and it’s in the papers then…” Before she could finish her thoughts, Alabaster cut her off._

_“Then we must act before the pureblood supremacists do!” He slammed his fist onto his desk. “Venutia, we don’t have time. I will give you three days to digest this information and think about it but if we wait any longer, I believe the entire world, our futures, will be in grave danger. Venutia, it is vital that you travel back to when Lord Voldemort first came to power and follow the prophecy to prevent his rise, otherwise dark forces in our present may find their way back in time or even if they don’t, find a way to overwhelm us in the present.”_

_Venutia repeated the prophecy in her head over and over and then a funny thought occurred to her. “Unite the muggle flower and the half-blood prince….wait a second! I have to restore peace by...playing matchmaker?!”_

_Alabaster, trying to add some levity to the grave situation, laughed. “It would seem so.” He confirmed her incredulous revelation._

Venutia held the time-turner in her hands and took a deep breath. Her three days were up.

She kept replaying the meeting in her head. She still couldn’t believe that she had agreed to this. She thought the whole thing was absurd. 

But she trusted Alabaster and she had always owed him for saving her, for giving her back her life and purpose. Even if she did technically work for him, she never felt like she had repaid him. 

There was also a part of her that wanted to believe that magic had no limits or that the limits could be tested and pushed at least. As someone who couldn't wield a wand but could use magical items, she had an affinity for such items. She also had enough pride and a big enough ego to believe that she had a great destiny from birth and that this just might be it.

“Here goes nothing.” She said, closing her eyes and turning the time turner the number of decades she wanted to travel back into.

When she opened her eyes, she realized it had worked. She stood in front of a newspaper stand and so the evidence hit her in the face. The year was now 1976 and she was in Cokeworth, England.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> Petunia will be the focus of the next chapter ~
> 
> I'm not sure where this story will go, I'm really just going with the flow but I'm interested in exploring the characters' psychology, the life of squibs, and comparing and contrasting the lives of a muggle with a witch sister, a half-blood wizard, and a squib from a pureblood family! Oh, and of course, bringing Petunia Evans and Severus Snape together hehe


	2. Petunia

“Petunia darling, just because you’re old enough to stay home by yourself doesn’t mean that you should. Please come with us this time. It will make your sister so happy!” Mrs. Evans had been trying to convince her eldest daughter for a week to take a trip to Diagon Alley with her, her father and her sister. 

When Petunia was younger, she had no choice but to go. She always felt uncomfortable there, surrounded by Lily’s kind. She imagined that they were all looking down on her, that they could sense that she was non-magical and despised her for it, just like that Snape boy. 

Petunia smiled to herself. This past summer, she had overheard a tearful, distraught Lily telling their parents that the Snape boy, her best childhood friend, had called her some kind of slur related to witches who came from muggle families and that he had fallen in with the wrong crowd. 

She knew that boy was awful all along and felt relieved that her sister was no longer friends with him. 

Now, if only her sister could realize that the entire magical world was bad news and give it up, then Petunia wouldn’t have to worry about being dragged into it.

From ages fourteen to sixteen, Petunia always opted to stay home rather than join her sister and their parents on any trip into the magical world. Now, Petunia was seventeen and Lily was sixteen, in her penultimate year at her silly magic school. 

Petunia’s absences on their trips throughout the years had not gone unnoticed and although it was an unspoken rule in the house not to talk about magic to her, due to what her mother called her “complex,” she was still a member of the family and almost an adult now. Mrs. Evans felt that she should show some maturity and grin and bear a trip to Diagon Alley for once.

“When I turn eighteen, I’m finding a job immediately, getting my own flat and moving out of here and then blissfully forgetting that a world of such weirdos exist.” Petunia said, sitting on her bed with her arms crossed.

Mrs. Evans sighed. “It’s your life and once you turn eighteen, you’re free to do that. But right now, you are still seventeen and you still live under my roof. So think of this trip as your last visit to the magical world and perhaps that will make the whole ordeal more tolerable.”  
Petunia groaned but acquiesced. Tomorrow, she vowed, would be the last day she ever set foot anywhere magical. Then, she would finally be free, free to forget.

“Thanks for coming, Tunes,” Lily smiled at her sister.

“You’re welcome.” Petunia said while rolling her eyes, as if Lily were thanking her for walking across a tightrope in her pajamas.

As they walked through the crowded alley, Petunia did everything she could to make herself feel smaller, invisible, shrinking herself down so she could avoid any perceived judgement from the witches and wizards surrounding her. 

At one point, she caught her reflection in a shop window. She had thin blonde hair, grey eyes, thin lips and a boyish figure: tall, narrow hips and very few curves to speak of. Maybe she would have thought she was pretty in some way, if she didn’t have Lily to compare herself with. 

Lily not only got the magical gene, but also the thick, lustrous red hair gene, the brilliant emerald green eyes, the full, pouty lips, the perfect height and the hourglass figure with all the right proportions. 

Her little sister was so carefree too, no anxiety to speak of, always eating whatever she wanted and saying whatever she thought. Petunia wasn’t like that, she was reserved and inhibited. Even though she was young and naturally thin, she still watched her weight and agonized at times over what she put in her mouth. She always weighed her words carefully, agonizing over what she would say before she said it, as if she always had to prepare a script. 

These tendencies made Petunia a perfectionist and that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. She had impeccable grades. She cooked, cleaned and sewed as if she were a domestic goddess rather than a teenage girl, and she was one of the most organized and put together people she knew. Even with all of her insecurities, she took pride in her cleanliness, orderliness and discipline; they were the few things in her life that she could control. 

If Petunia wasn’t the type of person who hated magic and anything occult, then she might describe herself, in astrological terms, as the consummate Virgo.

As Petunia continued gazing at her reflection, picking apart all of her faults, a rowdy demonstration was beginning in Diagon Alley Square.

The muggle girl swallowed nervously, feeling her anxiety rise in her chest. She knew it, she knew something bad would happen today. With magic always came trouble.

“What’s going on?” She whispered to her sister, as a crowd seemed to gather.

“It looks like there was a march for squib rights taking place but some pureblood supremacists weren’t happy about it and now they’re getting on their soapbox.” Lily explained, with clear disdain for the pureblood supremacists.

“Squib?” Petunia said, raising an eyebrow.

Lily looked defeated. “I know you’re not interested in the magical world, Tuney, but I wish you would at least have the patience and respect to remember basic things, like what a squib is.”

For a moment, Petunia felt a pang of guilt but she quickly buried it and hid behind her haughty facade. “Well, excuse me! I don’t spend practically nine months out of the year learning about all of this stuff at some esoteric school. I have chemistry formulas and math equations to memorize and a ton of books to read. It’s not my fault that the magical world and all its terminology isn’t super pertinent to my life.” She said in her usual sardonic way.

Lily sighed. “A squib is a non-magical person born to magical parents.” 

Petunia raised her eyebrows curiously. “Wait, so that’s like the opposite of you then? So, essentially a squib is just a muggle with magical parents?”

“Well, I wouldn’t call a squib a muggle. The statute of secrecy never applies to them and they can use some magical items but for all intents and purposes, yes, I suppose their situation is a bit like the inverse of mine.” Lily said patiently. 

A light bulb seemed to go off in Petunia’s head. She had never considered that if her sister was a witch born to muggles then the opposite was also possible - a muggle, sort of, born to a witch and a wizard.

Petunia grimaced at the thought. She felt like it was hard enough being the “ordinary” sister of a witch, she could not imagine being the ordinary sister on top of being the ordinary daughter, maybe the only ordinary one in the entire family. What a terrible fate!

And if they were protesting for their rights, these squibs, then that meant that there was prejudice against them and if there were counter protesters then that prejudice must be strong. Petunia, a self-absorbed teenager plagued by jealousy, hardly ever thought about other people’s problems and struggles but suddenly she was hit in the face with them and she felt empathy.

That’s not to say that she didn’t also feel relief, thinking about how much worse her situation could have been. She needed that sweet, sweet schadenfreude in her life.

While mentally soaking up the schadenfreude, suddenly, as if karma had it out for her, Petunia found herself lost and helpless in the crowd. It was one of her worst nightmares brought to life - being alone and vulnerable in the magical world as a lowly muggle.  
“The only thing worse than a muggle is a squib!” A man with long hair, dressed in all black shouted from a podium. The crowd whooped and hollered in agreement, shouting out similar statements and pumping their fists in the air. 

“Calm down, calm down.” Petunia repeated to herself like a mantra. She knew what was coming- the heart palpitations followed by the increased pulse rate, followed by the involuntary shaking of the hands, followed by her breath feeling restricted. She was about to have a panic attack, maybe even faint, right here, in the middle of all these rabid, fanatic muggle-hating witches and wizards and who knew what they would do to her. They seemed emboldened by the counter-protest.

Petunia, in her panic, closed her eyes and started desperately pushing through the crowd. By some miracle she managed to break free. She could feel her heartbeat returning to normal and thanked the heavens for their mercy. 

Where was she? It seemed that during that moment when she had been lost in thought, she wandered away from Lily and her parents and had accidentally turned down a different street than them. She was away from the counter protesters now but she still had a bad feeling in her gut. Looking around at the shops that lined the street she was on, she knew that this was the”bad” part of Diagon Alley, and that's saying a lot because in Petunia Evan’s mind, all of Diagon Alley is the “bad part.”

Again, Petunia’s panic rose as she looked at the strange shops and strange faces around her. She saw a sign that read “Knockturn Alley.” She felt like everything was spinning. Next thing Petunia knew, she didn’t see anything, just blackness.

Venutia Spindle had been standing in the shadows, watching, waiting. She understood the prophecy and knew exactly who she had to find and what she had to do. She thought it would be easier to start with the girl. Venutia was a twenty-something woman and the girl was soon to be a woman herself. Both of them were non-magical people who had the magical world thrusted upon them. She saw some common ground to work with here.

Petunia’s eyes fluttered open and she found herself in the arms of a beautiful stranger who smelled like cinnamon and orange peels. 

The stranger’s amber eyes were filled with concern and she had cascading curly brown hair that shaped her round face nicely. “Miss, you almost fainted. Do you feel alright?” The stranger spoke and her voice sounded like honey.

Normally, Petunia would freak out if she found herself half-dazed in a stranger’s arms in Diagon Alley or whatever alley she was in now but this woman holding her had the aura of a guardian angel. Could she possibly be using a spell?

“I….I….I think I’m fine, just a little lost maybe, that’s all.” Petunia uttered. She wanted to sound nonchalant and unaffected but she was still trying to get her bearings.

“Oh no. Lost and nearly fainted, we can’t have that. Let me help you.” Venutia tried her best to say this in a way that sounded like she was offering help rather than trying to force it.

Petunia was skeptical and said, “No, please, that won’t be necessary. I’m with a group, I’m sure they’ll catch up with me.”

Venutia looked around. “Miss, I don’t want to frighten you further but there is a demonstration taking place near here that has just turned violent and I don’t want to make any assumptions but since you said you were lost, I imagine it was not your intention to end up in Knockturn Alley and frankly, I don’t want to be here either. I just made a wrong turn and fortunately stumbled upon you. I don’t see anyone walking around who appears to know you and truthfully, I’m rather scared to be by myself right now. We’re both young women, perhaps we could stick together and head back towards the main Diagon Alley. I think we would both be a lot safer that way.”

Petunia looked around and realized that the strange woman was right and regardless of who or what she was, in this moment, Petunia did feel safer with her than alone and she also believed the woman when she said that she was scared too. “I think you’re right.” Petunia concurred. Then, with the woman’s support, she stood up and the two started walking.

The brunette stranger was the first to break the silence as they walked. “The magical world is so dangerous. I try to avoid it when I can.” She said.

Petunia immediately perked up. She was worried that this woman might be a witch who could sense that she was a muggle and was trying to trick her. But if she was really a witch would she have just said that she tried to avoid the magical world if she could help it? Was she also a muggle then? But if she was a muggle then what would she be doing in Diagon Alley alone?

“My name is Venutia.” She said with a friendly smile, showing off pristine white teeth.”

“Venutia.” Alarm bells went off in Petunia’s head. Venutia sounded like one of the witchiest names she had ever heard, like one of those old pureblood families Lily ranted about on occasion.

Try as she might have, to block out all talk of the magical world, Petunia still couldn’t help overhearing and remembering certain bits of information here and there. There was also the fact that she was an insufferable busybody, so much so that her busybody tendencies sometimes got in the way of the magic-hating facade she had formed to deal with her jealousy and bitterness.

“I’m Petunia.” She replied perfunctorily. Then, after a brief silence, she decided to just ask the woman, because she wouldn’t know how to talk to her until she did.

“So, Venutia, excuse me for asking but are you….you just said you try to avoid the magical world but it also seems that you’re here alone so are you…” Petunia wanted to curse herself for her lack of tact and surely her nervousness and discomfort made it obvious that she was a muggle, if Venutia hadn’t already known from the moment she saw her.

“Am I a witch?” Venutia finished the sentence for her and laughed. “No, I’m not.”

Petunia looked relieved and delighted but also confused. Before she could say anything, Venutia got really close to her, leaned in and whispered, “I’m a squib and that’s why I’m a bit scared right now.”

Instinctively and against her better judgement, Petunia gasped aloud. This glamorous looking lady was a squib? Petunia didn’t know if it was karma or irony that made this squib woman materialize before her right after she had been counting her blessings that she wasn’t a squib herself and witnessing witches and wizards rant about how squibs were shameful and worse than muggles.

“Oh. I...I’ve never met a squib before.” Petunia confessed.

“Does it bother you?” Venutia asked as if she were asking Petunia if she could pour her a glass of homemade lemonade.

Petunia thought for a moment. “No, of course not.” She replied and then thought to herself. “I’ll take a squib over an actual witch or wizard anyway.”

“Good, I didn’t think you were the type to hold that prejudice.” Venutia smiled.

Petunia actually laughed without thinking and said, in her wry way, “I hold a different prejudice.”

Venutia raised an eyebrow curiously. “You’re not a witch either, are you Petunia?”

Petunia turned a bit red from nerves. So, it was obvious. Of course it was.

She shook her head no.

“If you’re neither a witch nor a squib then…” Venutia trailed.

“I’m just a muggle.” Petunia said so low that it almost sounded like a whisper.

“Ah.” Venutia nodded knowingly.

“I envy you, Petunia. As a squib, I have more in common with muggles than I do with witches and wizards and yet because my entire family consists of magical people and I grew up with magical friends and even assumed for years, that I too was magical, until I didn’t get my letter and had to accept the truth, I feel that the magical world is woven into the fabric of my being. Try as I might to avoid it, I simply cannot always do that.”

Petunia felt the pang of sympathy that she had felt earlier but intensified because now she wasn’t just imagining what it was like to be a squib, but hearing about the experience from an actual squib.

“I can’t imagine what that must have been like. I try to avoid the magical world as much as possible too. I guess it’s easier for me to do that than you but I know how you feel on some level.”

“If you don’t mind me asking, what brings you to the magical world as a muggle? You’re far too young to have a magical child of school age.”

It wasn’t like Petunia, cold, reserved Petunia, to go beyond small talk with strangers but she found Venutia rather bewitching, a bit ironic since Venutia was about as magical as she was. 

“My younger sister is a witch, unfortunately.” Petunia stated wryly and bluntly.

“Unfortunately.” Venutia raised her eyebrow again.

“Yes, unfortunately. I believe we’re on the same page Venutia, that we both can agree that the magical world is dangerous and overrated.” Petunia crossed her arms like a sulky teen.

Venutia laughed. “You are correct in your assumptions, Petunia. I can’t argue with that.”

The older Evans girl smiled. She never thought she would ever befriend a stranger she met in the magical world but this Venutia woman was ultra down to earth and knew all the right things to say. Petunia got a cool, caring older sister vibe from her and she liked that because she had always envied Lily for getting a built-in mentor to guide her through adolescence, a girl who would go through everything before you did - puberty, heartbreak, etc, and give you advice. Lily was so damn lucky in so many ways.

“So, the group you said you were with, it’s your sister and parents?” Venutia inquired.

“Yes. I got separated from them, when the protesters and counter protesters started scuffling. They must be so worried.” Petunia answered. But she thought to herself, “or happy to be rid of me, probably enjoying Florean Fortescue's or one of those shops that sells the strange and sometimes rather repulsive wizard confectionaries.”

“How scary. I can imagine. Well, we’re turning onto the main street now. Is there a place you think they would be, a shop maybe?”

Petunia got distracted. While Venutia was asking her a question, Petunia saw the last person she would ever want to run into, both in the magical world and the muggle world: Severus Snape.

He was across the street, wearing his raggedy wizard robes and it looked like he was headed to the place that they had just come from, the dark, eerie area- Knockturn Alley.

“Huh? Do you know that boy across the street? Was he with your sister and parents?” Venutia inquired.

Petunia mentally kicked herself over the fact that it was so obvious that she was watching Severus intently. Thankfully he hadn’t noticed her and he was too far away to have heard Venutia.

“No, he’s no one. I was just spacing out.” Petunia said, rather unconvincingly.

Venutia grinned widely. “Is he the reason you dislike wizards?” She had a wicked look in her eyes.

Petunia turned scarlet and could feel her blood boiling at this accusation. The thing that Venutia was implying made her want to vomit.

But Venutia wasn’t wrong. She was wrong in what she was probably thinking was the reason for Petunia hating magic because of Severus, because he was an ex-boyfriend or something of that nature. But the general statement was true, Petunia did hate wizards and all things magic in general because of Severus. He was the catalyst that started her resentment.

First it was Severus, he was the first person who told her sister what she was- a witch. He was Lily’s introduction to the magical world. Severus, whose mother was also a witch, told Lily everything about their world, sharing knowledge and magic with her.

In doing so, he created a rift between the sisters. Not only that but Petunia had always felt that he stole Lily from her and that he purposely separated them because he disliked Petunia for being a muggle. He had wanted to turn Lily against her. 

Petunia was too hard-headed to realize that her own attitude was what actually made Lily recoil from her at times. In her mind, Severus Snape had succeeded in making her own sister wary of her and she would never not hate him for that.

Yes, her hatred of wizards, of the magical world, it started with Snape, then Lily’s Hogwarts letter, next was Petunia’s mortifying rejection from Hogwarts after she had written to the headmaster asking to attend, and then finally, Petunia’s parents delight over Lily’s “specialness,” and their tendency to neglect their eldest daughter.

It was a sequence of events that culminated in Petunia becoming a very cynical and jaded young woman, with a strong prejudice against the Wizarding world.

Petunia, flustered by Venutia’s cheeky question and tone, protested “When did I say I dislike wizards?”

Venutia smirked. “You said you hold a prejudice. It’s not for squibs and it’s obviously not for muggles since you are one. You also said that the magical world is dangerous and overrated and said it’s unfortunate that your sister is a witch. I’m not dense, Petunia.” Venutia said all of this in a very soft tone, making sure no wizards or witches around her could hear. She was frank but delicate in her conversation with the younger woman.

Petunia was taken aback by how casually Venutia addressed her and called her out. It reminded Petunia of how she talked to Lily sometimes. She didn’t know how she felt, having that dynamic reversed with someone else.

“Fine.” Petunia admitted. “That despicable boy is one of the reasons why I dislike wizards but it’s not because of what you’re thinking.” She said very soberly.

“Oh, hmmm” Venutia thought for a minute. “I apologize if I hit a soft spot. I’m a little bit nosy, I’m afraid, it’s not one of my better attributes. Curiosity killed the cat after all.”

Petunia found herself smiling. “Everyone says I’m nosy, that I’ve been that way since childhood, but I prefer to think myself astute.” Petunia said a bit proudly.

The two women shared a moment of silent eye contact in which they both seemed to recognize each other as kindred souls.

“Oh. I just realized, we’ve been walking mindlessly down the mainstreet. Where should we go?” Venutia said, concerned.

Petunia couldn’t believe how long she had been separated from Lily and her parents and how long she had been talking to a stranger in Diagon Alley, a stranger who she had actually met in Knockturn Alley, a place she never imagined that she would wander into.

Almost as if Venutia had summoned them herself, Petunia’s parents and Lily came running towards her, completely out of breath and in a panic.

“Tuney!” Lily said with relief, pulling her sister into a hug. Petunia was in such shock that rather than return the hug, she just stood like a statue as Lily squeezed her.

“Oh, Petunia dear! We were so worried! I’m so sorry. This is all my fault. You have your reasons for preferring to stay home during our trips here. Maybe those reasons are justified. If anything had happened to you, I would have to blame myself.” Mrs. Evans proclaimed breathlessly. Petunia knew where she got her anxious disposition from.

“We’re glad you’re alright, Tunes,” her father smiled.

Venutia Spindle stood in the background, smiling.

“Well, it was nice meeting you Petunia. I hope I’ll run into you again.” She said, causing Petunia to turn around and glance back at her. Before Petunia could say her own goodbye or invite Venutia to join her and her family, the mysterious woman had vanished. “Note to self,” Petunia thought, “be sure to ask Lily if it’s normal for squibs to give off a magic aura despite having no magic themselves.”

As Venutia wandered down a different street, she saw a mother and her child eating ice cream cones. The child dropped her cone and started to cry. Her tears quickly dissolved and a smile was brought to her face when the mother bent down and gave the girl her own cone.

Venutia felt a pang in her chest. After all this time, the pain was still there. It would always be there.

Later that night, Petunia Evans lied in bed staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep.

Before Venutia disappeared, she had said that she hoped to run into Petunia again sometime and she said it like she knew she would.

Petunia doubted that. She swore that today would be her last day in the wizarding world, the magical world, whatever one called it.

But then a disturbing truth occurred to her. “There is no magical world or muggle world. There’s just one world and any perceived separation is merely an illusion.” She felt a shiver run down her spine at this uncomfortable realization.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> The next chapter will center around Severus.
> 
> Again, still not really sure where this is going ^^; but I'm having fun with it!
> 
> I'm really interested in the psychology of Petunia, both in the books and the way I'm crafting her in this story.  
> She definitely reminds me of the astrological sign Virgo, so I'm trying to play with that a bit.
> 
> I also have this image of her as someone who is very repressed, or tries to repress herself at least. I think that is a Virgo-ish thing, also being a bit of a control freak. (I'm not a Virgo myself or even an earth sign) I want to explore how that affects her and her choices.
> 
> Finally, two points about Petunia and her parents. Petunia is definitely an unreliable narrator to an extent. She perceives slights when there are none and is sensitive. So, her perception of her parents favoritism and neglect is a little exaggerated. However, that doesn't mean that the favoritism doesn't exist or that there aren't moments when Petunia is rendered invisible. But those moments are usually subconscious on the part of her parents rather than deliberate as Petunia believes.
> 
> Oh, and according to Pottermore- "While Eugenia Jenkins was Minister for Magic from 1968 to 1975, Squib Rights marches began to surface. However, these marches attracted pure-blood riots." The time travel part starts in 1976 because I want to start with Lily and Sev as 6th year students at Hogwarts, but it's close enough to the surfacing of Squib Rights marches I think.


	3. Severus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realized I didn’t clarify this in the previous chapter - so let me clarify it now! In the last chapter and this chapter, Lily and Sev are 6th year Hogwarts students who are home for spring break. I realize a spring break was never mentioned in the series but for the sake of this story, I’m pretending there is one. They celebrate Christmas so it’s not too much of a stretch to assume they celebrate Easter as well. Of course, many students, including Sev and Lily often stay at school during this break but this year both of them decided to go home for various reasons. 
> 
> After this break, they will return to school to finish the semester and then bam! It will be the summer before their 7th and last year at school! Also, I normally picture Petunia being 2-3 years older than Lily but for the sake of this story, she’s more like a year or a year and half older.

Sixteen year-old Severus Snape’s long, dark robes swished around him as he made his way to the Knockturn Alley location of Mr Mulpepper’s Apothecary. The shop had a location in the less shady Diagon Alley but Severus preferred the Knockturn Alley location because it carried more obscure and intriguing ingredients.

Severus caught a lot of flak at Hogwarts for his interest in the dark arts, as did many of his fellow Slytherins who shared his interest. Of course, Slytherin students weren’t the only students who held that interest but they were often stereotyped in that way. 

There was some truth in it; Slytherins took pride in their house founder, Salazar Slytherin and in parselmouths, who were maligned as dark arts practitioners because of the negative traits attributed to snakes. Although some wizarding schools, such as the Durmstrang Institute, taught the Dark Arts, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was adamantly against doing so, focusing solely on defense against the dark arts instead.

From a young age, even prior to attending Hogwarts, Severus, thanks to his witch mother, knew a lot about magic and had always wondered why the dark arts got such a bad rap when one could just as easily use “normal” spells such as scourgify, which was supposed to be a harmless cleaning spell but could actually choke someone with soap bubbles, as Severus knew all too well thanks to that sadistic Gryffindor son-of-a-bitch James Potter, to harm people. Why was talking to snakes or spells Severus even invented himself such as levicorpus, which merely lifted someone into the air, considered “dark?”

“What’s considered dark magic is pretty arbitrary if you ask me,” a precocious ten-year old Severus who had not yet stepped foot on the Hogwarts grounds recalled saying to his mother, Eileen. This comment was prompted by Eileen telling him how powerful dark magic was.

“The Dark Arts are many, varied, ever-changing and eternal.” She had said. “Dark magic is, always has been, and always will be with us so we should learn about it and have an understanding of it, rather than fearing it and pretending it doesn’t exist.”

Eileen Prince, now Eileen Snape, had come from a once pureblood family renowned for the dark arts and so naturally she knew all about the different forms of dark magic and she could speak about them in an objective way, neither maligning nor glorifying them. 

“Yes, some branches of dark magic are evil, there’s no question about that, but other branches of it are just misunderstood or have been historically misrepresented.” She told her little boy one night, one of the many nights in which, when after Tobias Snape was finished with his drunken rage and had passed out, he could not sleep and he found his mother, who also could not sleep and was brewing a potion to soothe her nerves, and wide-eyed and eager, asked if he could help her and hear all about the once prominent family she came from and the magical world. 

Severus, a half-blood so desperate to escape the grim realities of the muggle world - his father, the neighborhood they lived in, the muggle boys on the block who were bigger and older and had chosen the tiny wizard who did not care at all for rough and tumble play, to be their punching bag, latched onto his mother’s stories and her family identity. He spent his youth soaking up as much knowledge about the magical world, it’s past and present, as he could.

The young boy’s curiosity and note-taking paid off. Although a half-blood who had grown up in a muggle community, he knew more potion recipes and spells including the dark spells passed down through the maternal side of his family, the moment he entered Hogwarts than many of those about to graduate knew. 

Now, as a 6th year student, and soon to be 7th year, he not only had a wealth of knowledge at his disposal, but he had also begun to create knowledge as well. Bored with the standard book of spells, he had begun experimenting and creating his own spells. Severus did not only possess a near photographic memory, but a knack for innovation as well. In his NEWT potions class, he had scribbled all over his copy of Advanced Potion Making, editing, modifying and improving the already high-level, complicated potions recipes. 

Severus’s fellow Slytherins, even the wealthy purebloods who generally viewed themselves as superior to him, looked upon his creations with awe. His talent and wit made his house proud. But many in the other houses looked upon him with suspicion. Rumors abounded, many spread by his Gryffindor enemies, who ironically, were an impetus for him creating dark spells in the first place. He needed to protect himself against his tormentors, and he did so in one of the only ways he knew how.

It seemed obvious to Severus that those who looked down on dark magic were merely too simple to understand it and too uncreative to deviate from standard practices. All the best witches and wizards were naturally curious about dark magic to some extent.

Well, maybe there were exceptions, maybe _she_ was an exception. She being, Lily Evans. 

Severus sighed. It was last year around this time that he had severed his relationship with the girl, his best friend, maybe his only real friend, the only other student at Hogwarts that he knew before attending, had known since they were both ten years old. He had called her a mudblood and he knew that was wrong. Hadn’t he told her when they were kids that blood didn’t matter? And was he really any better than her himself? 

After all, he wasn’t the “pureblood prince,” he was the “half-blood prince.”

The two tried to talk it out but everything went back to other people.

“You call everyone a mudblood. You’ve gotten deeper into dark magic and you hang out with Avery and Mulciber.” Lily proclaimed. 

“Yeah, well you always defend those idiot marauders when they started all of this in the first place. As if the Shrieking Shack incident wasn’t bad enough, they then had to humiliate me at the lake and yet you haven’t stopped associating with them have you? You expect me to distance myself from my fellow housemates, but I don’t see you doing the same. Hypocrite.” Severus had snapped back 

The conversation had ended there, with blame on both sides.

Without Lily, this past year at Hogwarts, his first without her, was one of the hardest years of his life. He had actually decided to come home for spring break for once, partially to keep his mother company because Tobias Snape, who had tormented his wife and son for years, finally, in a mid-life crisis moment, decided to buy a motorcycle and ride off and abandon his family. Good riddance. Better to be fatherless than have a shitty father, Severus had thought. He knew his mother was better off now but he also thought it prudent to check in on her and keep her from falling too deeply into despair and loneliness.

Another reason he had decided to come home was to get away from his bad memories and regrets from school, these past two years especially. Overall, life at Hogwarts was much better than his home life but he still lamented the fact that it hadn’t turned out to be the fairy tale place he had so naively dreamed about as a child. He thought simply being a wizard would make him worthy enough but it wasn’t enough. Everyone else was a wizard or witch too and on top of that many of them had more money, more status and more love than he could have ever fathomed. Once an outcast, always an outcast. “Misery loves company but hell is others.” He thought.

Severus strode into the apothecary and started examining the merchandise. His potions professor, Slughorn, had secured funding for his NEWT class so that every student could purchase their own potions ingredients and make whatever they wanted for their final, end of -year project. Although Sev’s grandparents, Eileen’s parents, had squandered much of the family fortune, Eileen still had a tiny inheritance that helped her cover the bare necessities and being a bit of a prodigal potioneer herself, she was able to whip up a lot of useful concoctions and even sell them sometimes. She had always felt more competent with a cauldron than with a wand. 

So, in Sev’s home, there were lots of materials for potion making. But even so, there were still items, rare and expensive items, that had always been beyond his and his mother’s reach but with the funding, combined with a generous gift of money from the now graduated Lucius Malfoy, some of these items were now available to him. 

The half-blood prince did not fancy people treating him like a charity case but he tolerated, welcomed even Lucius Malfoy’s help, for Lucius was known for being charitable to talented Slytherins, regardless of their backgrounds. Sev knew Lucius just wanted to recruit talent for the Dark Lord and he figured that if Lucius was going to use him then he would use him too, a sort of symbiotic relationship

Besides, the Dark Lord and the death eaters weren’t just blood supremacists; they were seekers of liberation for wizardkind. Why should their kind, clearly the most gifted humans, live in secret? Why should they hide their magic and respect muggles when muggles didn’t respect them? Severus could picture putting his talents to work for such a cause. It wasn’t all bad like some people thought. Maybe some witches and wizards just misunderstood the movement, like they misunderstood the dark arts.

Severus Snape, so lost in thought and excitement over the potential potions he could brew, did not notice, even in the slightest, that he was being watched, by a lady with long chocolate ringlets, standing in a corner of the shop.

Venutia Spindle was watching and waiting, as she had done shortly before with Petunia Evans. “This mission really is a full-time job.” She thought and yawned. 

The young squib woman enjoyed talking to crowds and firing them up. She didn’t dislike one-on-one interactions but it was always a bit difficult to initiate contact with a stranger, especially in this outlandish situation in which she needed to speak with people who were younger than her and yet long-dead in the time-period she came from.

Before her mission, Venutia had known almost nothing about Petunia Evans but she knew a lot about Severus Snape. Who didn’t? He had been a legitimate death eater in the first war, the time-period that Venutia was now entering, but he switched sides, worked for the Order, deceived the Dark Lord, saved Harry Potter, had been awarded the Order of Merlin, and even had a portrait in Hogwarts for his short time as headmaster. He was a prominent historical figure, considered an exceptionally brave man.

“And now what? If I am to rewrite history, what will he become?” 

Venutia knew the boy had had a tragic life, even if he did become a revered figure in the end. She knew the prophecy from her time period was meant to help the future but she still worried about what the full effects of changing the past in such a momentous way would be. Venutia’s real mission, at the end of the day, was advancing squib rights, that was all she cared about. The young woman couldn’t help but feel that the time-traveling and matchmaking stint she was doing now was not so much to her benefit but to others, even if it would save a lot of lives and improve the quality of a lot of lives in the end.

“The things I do for Alabaster Thistle.” She sighed, shaking her head and almost laughing at herself. 

Although, one benefit of being sent to this time period was that she could witness first hand the emerging squib rights movement and that could definitely help her with the work she was doing in her own timeline. She was very tempted though, to get involved in the activism in this time period but she knew that posed a lot of dangers and was also not why she was sent here in the first place, but undoubtedly the thought kept crossing her mind. Naturally, she needed to lie low. If she decided to go on a wild activist spree, it could jeopardize her ability to get close to Petunia and Severus. Venutia needed to be a mysterious, unknown figure who flitted in and out of their lives.

Upon returning to her serious demeanor, Venutia watched the Snape boy intently. She tried to think of any common ground she could work with here. 

Venutia’s family, like most traditional pureblood wizarding families, valued the magical disciplines that were the most difficult and arcane, this included potions of course. As a squib, Venutia could not make potions on her own but growing up, she did not know about her lack of magic and did not realize that the potions she would help her relatives make only worked because of their magic. Still, all of that experience made the young squib very knowledgeable about the subject. And technically, she could brew up a potent potion, as long as she had a witch or wizard to supply their magic. Ironically, she was quite skilled in the magical arts despite not possessing magic.

What else? Well, it was obvious that the half-blood boy struggled with similar issues that the muggle girl struggled with: feelings of inadequacy, worthlessness, inferiority, jealousy, self-loathing, angst that went beyond the usual teenage variety, a perpetual dissatisfaction with their lives and circumstances. Venutia Spindle had long ago left that headspace behind but boy had she been there, in the darkest depths of negativity, wanting to curse the whole world for being so dreadfully unfair.  


She knew what it was like to desperately want more from life, to feel like “why couldn’t it have been me?” Why couldn’t Petunia be the magical one? Why did Severus have to suffer because his ancestor squandered their wealth and ruined their reputation? Before Alabaster Thistle had come along, Venutia Spindle had it a lot worse than the muggle girl and the half-blood boy. She had nothing. So, she understood.

The young squib woman picked up a book of advanced potion making, pretending to read, as she continued to watch and wait for the right moment. As she was standing there, a black cat, probably a pet of the shopkeeper, nuzzled up to her. Venutia smiled but rolled her eyes. 

“My feline friends, always trying to unintentionally out me as a squib everywhere I go.” Venutia thought. It was no secret that cats and squibs had an affinity with each other. Cats were the non-magical version of kneazles and squibs were people with a dormant magical gene. Venutia often wondered if the hours she wasted away playing with cats in the family garden when she was little worried her parents. Had that been the first warning sign?

The cat that was giving her attention now was very clever; it might have been part kneazle. It could sense what the young woman wanted and had a desire to please her. The spunky little creature, after enjoying a head rub from the beautiful lady, made its way over to Severus. It jumped on the shelf where he was inspecting a bezoar and startled him, causing him to drop the glass bottle containing the bezoar. Before the bottle could fall and break, Venutia dashed over and caught it, quite elegantly.

Venutia sighed with relief. “That was terribly close but here you are, it’s perfectly intact, no damage. I’m surprised, cats don’t normally cause such trouble, that one has the personality of a dog it seems. What a fine bezoar this is. The apothecary in Knockturn Alley always has finer and better quality products than the one in Diagon Alley.”

Sixteen year-old Severus Snape had no idea what to make of the strange woman speaking to him. She was definitely older than him, a witch of legal age, but still quite young. She must be somewhere in the eighteen to twenty-five year old age range he surmised. She had quite lovely hair and a lovely face - round with a small button nose and large eyes. He couldn’t help but notice the scent of orange peels and cinnamon wafting from her. She wore the colors orange and brown and could have easily just stepped out of the pages of the autumn edition of a fashion magazine.It was odd for him to encounter a woman like this.

It took the boy a minute to process the fact that this woman had just saved him from having to buy that bezoar, in case it had fallen and broken, and that she, like him, preferred the apothecary in Knockturn Alley to the one in Diagon alley, which showed that she was a person with good taste. 

“Th….thank you.” Severus stammered and mentally kicked himself for stuttering.  


The woman looked at him curiously.

“Are you a Hogwarts student?” She asked 

Severus was so confused. He thought after thanking the woman that she would say “you’re welcome” and carry on with her business. Why was she still talking to him? What did she want?

“Yes, I am.” The boy answered in a monotone voice, not wanting to say anything more about himself than that. “Why do you ask?” He added, with a raised eyebrow.

Venutia continued smiling, unfazed by the boy’s uninviting tone and posture.

“I noticed your copy of _Advanced Potion Making_.” Venutia enthusiastically pointed at the book tucked under his arm. “You must be in the NEWT level class, that’s very impressive. There’s no doubt _Advanced Potion Making_ is one of the best potions textbooks on the market but I still think many of the recipes in there could be even more fine-tuned. For example, if you turn to page 394 which has the recipe for Draught of Living Death, the book tells you to cut the Sopophorous bean but actually, it’s better to crush the bean with a silver dagger, as it will release its juices in a more efficient manner that way. Furthermore, adding a clockwise stir after every seventh counterclockwise stir will make the brew more potent.”

Severus Snape did not need Venutia Spindle or anyone for that matter to tell him that _Advanced Potion Making_ could be tweaked. He was clever and intuitive enough when it came to potions to make his own adjustments and had been doing so for years. In fact, most of his school textbooks were full of notes he had scribbled with ideas for improvement. When you spend every day trying to prove yourself, you become a perfectionist. 

But Severus was very taken aback by this strange woman’s knowledge, the exact details she gave and especially by her sharp memory. He opened the book to page 394 and that was indeed the page that contained the recipe for Draught of Living Death. He noticed that he had no notes in the margin for this potion, he hadn’t gotten around to it yet. He didn’t know if Venutia’s recommendation was to be trusted but he also couldn’t think of any reason why she would be lying. She kinda just seemed like a woman with a passion for potions who was a little too ready to start chatting about them with strangers. He could relate to that, well the being passionate about potions, not the wanting to talk to people part. Severus made a note of what she said; he would test it out.

“Uh thank you for the tip and thanks again for catching the glass bottle with the bezoar.”

Venutia continued smiling. “Oh, it’s no problem. I love talking potions; not everyone appreciates the art and subtlety of potion-making, the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through the human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses…” The young woman smirked, almost seductively.

Now, Severus was not looking at Venutia with suspicion but with awe. Not only was she a beautiful older woman who was speaking to him but she was saying things he could have said himself. Who was this woman? Suddenly Severus wanted to talk to her.

“You… you really have an appreciation for potions. Did you study at Hogwarts? Are you working in the potions industry now?”

Venutia had a pleased expression on her face. “No, I didn’t study at Hogwarts but I have many family members and friends who did so I know quite a lot about their curriculum.”

Severus figured she must have gone to a private academy. She certainly looked wealthy and attractive enough to be a Beauxbatons alum. 

“And I don’t work in the potions industry, although it is kind of a family business.” Venutia continued.

At this point, Severus could deduce that whoever this woman was, she probably came from some fancy pureblood family, which made her friendly attitude towards him, a nobody in hand-me down robes, all the more strange. Perhaps she could sense his talent and ability, shining through all his other flaws and shortcomings?

“I’m Venutia by the way.” The woman stuck out her hand.

Severus stared at the hand like it was a severed cat head. But finally, after an awkward pause, he shook it, a little less firmly than he would have liked. It surprised him that she didn’t state her full name but he was sort of relieved because it meant that he could just state his first name as well. 

“I’m Severus.” He said shyly. 

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Severus.” Venutia said in her velvety voice.

The boy stared at the ground, a bit pink in the cheeks.

“I’m sorry, you were probably shopping for ingredients for school. I didn’t mean to distract you. I just stopped in to take a quick survey of the inventory this week and then got a little carried away. I’ll be on my way then. Good luck with your studies.” Venutia said hurriedly but in her usual, sweet velvety tone. 

Then she bent down to pat the black cat on the head. She gave the creature a little wink and mouthed “thanks for your help.” And finally, she turned on her heel and dashed out the door.  


Severus was left standing with his mouth hanging open. It was such a small, short interaction but it was one he would not soon forget.

A week later, Venutia Spindle sat in her hotel room. She had been given more than enough money for this mission to enable her to bounce from hotel to hotel and get whatever food or goods she wanted. It certainly helped that the money was worth more four decades ago. Venutia also wasn’t stuck in this time period, at least not permanently. She did not have to stay here indefinitely until she completed her mission. Of course, it wouldn’t be prudent to go back and forth between four decades daily but she and Alabaster had decided on meeting in the future timeline every month to check in and report on progress, and also to keep the young woman from feeling “trapped” in the past she now inhabited most of the time.

It was the third week of being in the past that Venutia made contact with the muggle girl and the half-blood wizard. She had spent the first two weeks researching, planning and getting settled. Now the fourth week, a full month, was coming to a close and she was planning her next steps, as well as getting ready for her first meeting with Alabaster.

“Venutia! I can’t believe it’s been a month already. I’ve been anticipating your arrival. How are you? And of course, how is the mission taking shape?” The older Thistle brother enthusiastically greeted her. 

“It’s good to see you too, Alabaster. I’m doing well. The mission is….well a month is such a small amount of time for such a nuanced mission. I’ve met both the subjects separately but it’s far too soon to bring them together. I think I have to work on both of them a lot more before I force any interaction between them.”

Alabaster nodded his head vigorously. “Of course, of course.” He seemed to understand and be completely on board with the young woman’s approach, putting his full faith in her.

“It is a bit funny,” Venutia added, “I’m supposed to be pairing them together but so far, I think all I’ve accomplished is making them both a bit enamored of me. I hope that doesn’t get in the way.” She was half-joking, half-serious. The young woman did have a bad habit of being unintentionally flirty, with both men and women.

Alabaster chuckled, a deep, full-bodied chuckle. “I can certainly see how you might have created that problem.”

Venutia swore there was a small smirk on his lips and she blushed crimson. She really wished her boss didn’t have such an effect on her.

Meanwhile, Severus Snape was back at Hogwarts, alone in his room, hunched over his books and his cauldron. He had decided to make Draught of Living Death for his final project, as it was a notoriously difficult potion to master. First, he brewed the potion according to the instructions in his textbook. He managed to make a decent brew. After, he tried it again, following Venutia’s advice and he found himself stunned. The color, the smell and the smoke were all perfect. He had made an ideal brew.

That night, as he lay in bed, he tried not to think about the impending summer vacation and what it meant for him, being stuck among muggles in Spinner’s End, and he instead wondered if he would ever run into Venutia again and what other secret knowledge she possessed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thanks for reading!


	4. A Meeting in Cokeworth

It was 6am on a Saturday and Petunia Evans was wide awake. Petunia’s friends at school liked to jokingly call her a freak of nature because she was the only kid they knew who didn’t sleep in on the weekends. The older Evans sister cringed at being called such a thing, even if it was a joke, that term and all the baggage it carried was reserved for her younger sister.

Still, she understood where her friends were coming from. She admitted it was a bit strange that she liked routine so much that she needed to wake up at the same time everyday, meaning the lack of school on the weekends would not change her sleeping and waking habits, even if her body did crave, from time to time, some extra respite. Petunia wanted order and discipline in her life. Sleeping late would just throw off her equilibrium and make her feel guilty.

Besides, she adored the feeling of waking with the sun, being the first to greet the day and reap the rewards of her early rising - the delicious quiet that surrounded her, no people, only the birds chirping, as if they were singing a secret song just for her. It was silly, but one of the ways she coped with having a special sibling who outshined her, was by pretending that the world, the plants and animals, were doing things just for her, birds singing just for her ears, a flower blooming right before her, just for her eyes. At 17, she was too old and jaded to believe the lies she told herself as a girl but still, they comforted her.

Lily was back at school though. The spring break had ended. There was no reason to think about her, except that the end of spring break always meant the coming of summer vacation. Then the vivacious little red-head nuisance would be home for two whole months. She’d come back, like always, with frogs in her pockets, all ready and willing to show off her magic tricks for mum and dad, turning rats into teacups. Was that not animal abuse? No one seemed to care. The girl’s parents were too entranced by it all to think about it on a deeper level. They were spellbound by the good aspects of magic and blind to the bad.

Petunia was always belittled anytime she brought up her concerns about magic. 

“But they can literally take away our memories! It’s called ‘obliviate.’ They wave their wands and just say ‘obliviate.’ Just one wave of their wands and they could destroy our whole lives! This stuff shouldn’t be allowed; it should be illegal and yet you let her go to that school and learn it. I think it’s sick, inhumane!” She had shouted at her parents a few years ago, to which they merely waved her away and waved off her concerns, but obliviate wasn’t even the worst of the stuff she had learned about.

That awful boy...he had revealed the worst of the wizarding world, hadn’t he, and demonstrated the worst as well.  
Petunia remembered it so clearly, she would never forget that day.

_“Stop it!” Petunia had shrieked as Lily used her magic to make a flower’s petals open and close._

_“It’s not hurting you,” said Lily, but she closed her hand on the blossom and threw it back to the ground._

_“It’s not right,” said Petunia, but her eyes had followed the flower’s flight to the ground and lingered upon it. “How do you do it?” she added, and there was definite longing in her voice._

_“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” That awful boy, that Snape boy could no longer contain himself, but had jumped out from behind the bushes._

_Petunia shrieked and ran backward toward the swings, but Lily, though clearly startled, remained where she was. Snape seemed to regret his appearance. A dull flush of color mounted the sallow cheeks as he looked at Lily._

_“What’s obvious?” Lily had asked._

_Snape had an air of nervous excitement. With a glance at the distant Petunia, now hovering beside the swings, he lowered his voice and said, “I know what you are.”_

_“What do you mean?”_

_“You’re…you’re a witch,” Snape had whispered._

_He flapped after the girls, looking ludicrously batlike._

_“You are,” said Snape to Lily. “You are a witch. I’ve been watching you for a while. But there’s nothing wrong with that. My mum’s one, and I’m a wizard.”_

_Petunia remembered her laugh when he said that, it was like cold water._

_“Wizard!” she shrieked, her courage returned once she had recovered from the shock of his unexpected appearance. “I know who you are. You’re that Snape boy! They live down Spinner’s End by the river,” she had told Lily, warning her, protecting her. Even as a child, Petunia had a keen interest in her neighbors and her surroundings. Not to mention, she had heard many rumors about the Snape family, none of them good. They seemed a nasty, wicked lot. No wonder, Spinner’s End was a filthy place filled with filthy people, just like the river that ran through there._

_“Why have you been spying on us?” Petunia interrogated him, hands akimbo, with the meanest look she could muster._

_“Haven’t been spying,” said Snape, hot and uncomfortable and dirty-haired in the bright sunlight. “Wouldn’t spy on you, anyway,” he added spitefully, “you’re a Muggle.”_

_Though Petunia hadn’t yet learned the meaning of that word, and how it would come to define her, she could hardly mistake the tone. It was one of the first times, which would become many times, that she was made to feel inferior, to feel othered and unworthy._

_Shortly after that awkward first encounter, Petunia found herself spying on the boy and her sister, feeling it was her duty as the elder sister to protect Lily, and also if she admitted, feeling her curiosity and longing get the better of her._

_“It’s real for us,” Snape said to Lily about Hogwarts. “Not for her. But we’ll get the letter, you and me.”_

_“You’ve got loads of magic,” he continued, telling Lily. “I saw that. All the time I was watching you…”_

_Petunia remembered cringing in her hiding spot. What a creep this little boy was!_

_“She’s jealous because you’re special and she’s ordinary.” Snape then said to Lily. This comment stung young Petunia in a way she had never been stung before. She wouldn’t soon forget it, would probably never forget it. “You’re special and she’s ordinary.” Even now, those words would come creeping into her mind from time to time, reminding her of all her shortcomings._

_Then, things took a frightening turn for her._

_“Dementors are for people who do really bad stuff. They guard the wizard prison, Azkaban. You’re not going to end up in Azkaban, you’re too – ” Snape started turning red as he explained the darker aspects of the wizarding world to little Lily._

_At that moment, Petunia, who had been hiding behind a tree, lost her footing, shaken by images of monsters who sucked the souls out of people._

_“Tuney!” Lily had called out, with surprise and welcome in her voice, but Snape had jumped to his feet._

_“Who’s spying now?” he shouted. “What d’you want?”_

_Petunia recalled how breathless she was, alarmed at being caught. She struggled for something hurtful to say._

_Finally, a cheap insult came to her. “What is that you’re wearing, anyway?” she said, pointing at Snape’s chest. “Your mum’s blouse?” It was the typical, innocuous sort of insult a child would make._

_But that awful boy didn’t counter Petunia’s insult with hurtful words of his own, he countered it with magic._

_Suddenly, there was a crack. A branch fell over Petunia’s head. The branch caught her on the shoulder. It was a large, thick branch. She remembered the sting, the way she had staggered backward and burst into tears._

She told her parents but they didn’t believe her. Well okay, they believed her but they thought she was exaggerating. They made light of the whole incident. 

“Just boys being boys!” Her mother had laughed. “He must like you,” her father had winked playfully. 

No, he was just a freak being a freak and he clearly adored Lily and hated her. She had no doubt that he would have tipped the whole tree over and killed her if he could have. The incident was not at all reminiscent of the typical bickering between boys and girls as children. No, it was about witches and wizards versus muggles, it was about exclusion. 

As if it couldn’t get any worse from that point on, that awful boy continued to destroy her relationship with her sister and to destroy any shred of self-confidence she had, and all at such a young, impressionable age.

Another memory she could not erase (sometimes she wished she could obliviate her own mind) was the first time Lily took the train to Hogwarts.

Everyone told Petunia that she was nosy, a busy-body. Well, if that was true, then she clearly passed that trait down to her sister, and that awful boy too, shared this negative trait.

_“I don’t – want – to – go!” Petunia had spat as she dragged her hand back out of her sister’s grasp. “You think I want to go to some stupid castle and learn to be a – a…” Her pale eyes roved over the platform, over the cats mewling in their owners’ arms, over the owls, fluttering and hooting at each other in cages, some already in their long black robes, loading trunks onto the scarlet steam engine or else greeting one another with glad cries after a summer apart. “ – you think I want to be a – a freak?”_

_Petunia remembered the piercing look Lily had given her and how low and fierce her voice became. “You didn’t think it was such a freak’s school when you wrote to the  
headmaster and begged him to take you.”_

_She remembered turning scarlet. Lily had exposed her, made her publicly confront her inferiority and shame._

_“You shouldn’t have read – ” Petunia had whispered, “that was my private – how could you – ?” Even now, remembering that moment, she could feel the tears in her eyes._

_Lily gave herself away by half-glancing toward where that awful, dirty boy stood nearby.  
Petunia gasped. “That boy found it! You and that boy have been sneaking in my room!” _

_Petunia recalled how after coming home from the station that day, she cleaned her room vigorously, petrified of the thought of that boy having sullied it with his mere presence. Of course, that came after an hour of weeping, and hiding away Dumbledore’s reply. She couldn’t bring herself to rip the stupid thing to shreds like she wanted for some reason._

_“No – not sneaking – ” Now Lily was on the defensive. “Severus saw the envelope, and he couldn’t believe a Muggle could have contacted Hogwarts, that’s all! He says there must be wizards working undercover in the postal service who take care of – ” Of course he couldn’t believe that she had contacted Hogwarts, that she was clever. Of course he just had to assume that she had sent the letter through the regular post, as if. If there was anything Petunia prided herself on, it was her resourcefulness and her drive to get what she wanted._

_“Apparently wizards poke their noses in everywhere!” The prideful girl had retorted, as pale as she had been flushed. “Freak!” She recalled spitting at Lily. That time, she was asking for it._

“Paranoid, anxious, hysterical, a worry-wart, you need to calm down,” even in different settings, totally unrelated to magic, people often threw these words at Petunia. To say that bothered her was an understatement. She strived so hard to be the normal one and yet it seemed like everyone had her pegged as a mental case, and of course, it was always girls who expressed their worries who got called “hysterical.” 

“Hmph,” She crossed her arms in fury just thinking about it. She was the older one and pretty damn smart if she did say so herself. She had legitimate concerns and philosophical questions about magic and yet her parents wouldn’t take her seriously and there was no one else she could speak with.

No one else in her life knew about the magical world. The only witch she knew was her sister and the only warlock she knew, or wizard, whatever they called the male ones, was that awful boy, who encapsulated every negative stereotype of a warlock or wizard, whatever, that she could think of. She paused for a moment and remembered that the boy’s mother was a witch. Of course, she didn’t know the woman, but still that was three magical people who existed in her world, and that wasn’t a lot, not to mention that she only spoke with one of them, and as much as she loved her little sister deep down, she did not have a good relationship with her by any means, certainly not one conducive to open communication.

The Statute of Secrecy, that was another problem. Thanks to the Statute of Secrecy, Petunia could not tell any other muggles who didn’t already know about the magical world - and in her town she did not know of anyone else like her - a muggle, or as she preferred to call it a “normal person” with magical, or as she liked to call it “freak” family members- about the magical world. If she dared expose those freaks, then they would punish her, probably obliviate her and then some. They made the rules. At the end of the day, it was their world and she was just living in it.

And so, Petunia Evans had to bear the burden of the knowledge of this secret world and its mysterious powers, all alone. There was not a single peer or friend that she could commiserate with. If she dared bring it up, then she would be punished by the freaks, if not shipped off to an insane asylum by doubtful normal people first.

The adults in her life were always trying to drill into Petunia’s head that life wasn’t fair, but she always thought that she could be the one to teach them a lesson about that.

It was 7:30 now and after putting together a cute outfit and putting her face on, as she always did, Petunia had begun making breakfast. She always prepared a lovely full-course breakfast on the weekend for her parents, partly because she genuinely loved to cook and bake. She restricted what she ate and had an obsessive need to count calories and fat grams but the joy of cooking wasn’t about the eating, it was about the process, the striving for the perfect meal, in both taste and appearance. Impressing others, that was the true delight. She also partly made this beautiful spread every weekend to maybe subconsciously show her parents that her skills were more practical and wholesome than Lily’s.

“Wow, Evans! You’re gonna make a great wife someday!” A boy in Petunia’s year had told her after Home Ec one day, when she had been handing out the cupcakes she made. She remembered the boy, a handsome brown-eyed brunette, licking the cream, and looking Petunia up and down in her silver-gray dress and favorite green apron. It had given her a rare thrill, a feeling of pride and being wanted that she so desperately craved. 

Of course, she genuinely loved to cook, bake and dress nicely for herself; those things gave her a harmonious feeling in her life, but if they also helped her snag a rich, handsome husband, then she didn’t mind that. 

A few of Petunia’s teachers, her chemistry teacher in particular, as she had been, to her delight, among the top students in that class and clearly very passionate about writing all the formulas correctly and mixing just the proper amount of chemicals, had asked her about her future plans and if she intended to go to university. Petunia had just stared at them blankly. University? Only posh men from London went to university. Petunia wasn’t poor but she wasn’t rich either and she was not a man. Sure, she would get out of Cokeworth, rise above her station, she knew that. Petunia had a plan. It did not involve a degree that she couldn’t afford and that might not even prove useful for her as a woman. 

She would do what most people did, but do it better. She would get a job typical for a woman upon graduating high school, a clerical job for example. She would use her superior wits to get that clerical job in an office in London, at one of the top companies or firms. She would seduce a man slightly older than her, who was already in a managerial position and looking towards future promotions. He would put a diamond ring on her finger that would put all the other office girls’ rings to shame. Then, Petunia would quit her job, have one child, just one, hopefully a boy, because boys always loved their mothers best, and she would be sure to give him all the attention she never got. She would enjoy a great big home of her own, motherhood, family vacations in the south of France, and of course, her husband’s wages.

What could possibly be better than that? Petunia had no doubt that she could succeed. She was diligent, somewhat popular, and well put together - the perfect young English lady. Despite the bitterness and jealousy she held about magic in her heart, she also held hope for her future and a belief in her charms and abilities. If only she had been born into a more appreciative family. Nevertheless, she would build her own family that appreciated, needed her.

The time had come. It was June. Petunia’s graduation from high school was just around the corner. She would soon start applying to those jobs in London, and then she would move into her own cozy little flat, and start her new life. She realized then, that it didn’t matter that Lily would be home soon for summer vacation, because she herself would be gone soon. The first summer of not having to think of herself as the elder, non-magical Evans sister! In London, she would be a stranger to everyone for the first time, maybe even a stranger to herself. As she thought about her future, the painful memories of the past began to fade. Alone in the kitchen, she nearly squealed out loud, delighted at the thought of reinventing herself. This summer was going to be brilliant!

After breakfast and cleaning up, Petunia, who was wearing a dark green tartan dress and pair of sensible low-wedge black heels, grabbed her purse and headed to her 9-5 Saturday shift at the local bookstore. She always arrived exactly half an hour early so she could get settled and sneak a few pages of her own reading in. Of course, she snuck pages in all throughout her shift, whenever the shop wasn’t busy and no one was looking. She quite liked this job, it could get boring at times, as she tapped her nails on the counter, staring at the clock, but she never tired of people watching and judging other’s tastes in books, and sometimes clothing as well. She wasn’t nosy, really, just opinionated and astute, rather good qualities to possess actually.

In her somewhat large purse, filled with an assortment of makeup, tissues, and anything else she might need, Petunia had managed to fit the latest book she was reading, a poetry collection, _The Colossus and Other Poems_ by Sylvia Plath, a blonde woman whom she thought bared some resemblance to her and who had committed suicide thirteen years prior.

The collection contained 40 poems in total. Petunia had finished the 25th, “Man in Black,” the other day. The collection had been recommended to her by a friend and she promised she would finish reading it, but so far she disliked many of the titles and themes of these poems. They struck her as suspiciously witchy. Still, she kept her promises and would finish it, and then proceed to tell her friend what a drag it was and what terrible taste she has.

She was now reading the 26th poem, “Snakecharmer” :

_….Of sways and coilings, from the snake-rooted bottom  
Of his mind. And now nothing but snakes  
Is visible. The snake-scales have become  
Leaf, become eyelid; snake-bodies, bough, breast  
Of tree and human. And he within this snakedom_

_Rules the writhings which make manifest  
His snakehood and his might with pliant tunes  
From his thin pipe. Out of this green nest_

_As out of Eden's navel twist the lines  
Of snaky generations: let there be snakes!  
And snakes there were, are, will be—till yawns_

_Consume this pipe and he tires of music  
And pipes the world back to the simple fabric  
Of snake-warp, snake-weft. Pipes the cloth of snakes_

_To a melting of green waters, till no snake  
Shows its head, and those green waters back to  
Water, to green, to nothing like a snake.  
Puts up his pipe, and lids his moony eye…._

Clearly the poem was about creation and destruction but young Petunia did not see much merit in it. The imagery was rather off-putting. The only snakes she wanted to imagine were the dead ones used to make pretty bags and accessories. 

She flipped to the next poem, “The Hermit at Outermost House”:

_Sky and sea, horizon-hinged  
Tablets of blank blue, couldn't,  
Clapped shut, flatten this man out._

_The great gods, Stone-Head, Claw-Foot  
Winded by much rock-bumping  
And claw-threat, realized that._

_For what, then, had they endured  
Dourly the long hots and colds,  
Those old despots, if he sat_

_Laugh-shaken on his doorsill,  
Backbone unbendable as  
Timbers of his upright hut?_

_Hard gods were there, nothing else.  
Still he thumbed out something else.  
Thumbed no stony, horny pot,_

_But a certain meaning green.  
He withstood them, that hermit.  
Rock-face, crab-claw verged on green._

_Gulls mulled in the greenest light._

“I’m not surprised this lady stuck her head in an oven.” Petunia closed the book and snorted. But sadly, she could relate. Sometimes she wanted to stick her own goddamn head in the oven.

The day creeped on slowly; it was one of those days. Finally, after glancing at the clock all day, Petunia looked up to see that it was 4:30. “Yes!” The last half hour. She didn’t have any plans but was thinking of going dress shopping before the shops closed at 7. She already had her graduation gown picked out but knew there would be lots of parties to attend and she wanted different outfits for each one.

As she was contemplating the importance of color coordination, an enigmatic acquaintance from a few months before made her second appearance.

Venutia Spindle, clad in a large brimmed black hat, her brown curls spiraling down her cream-colored blouse, almost reaching her knee-length sleek black skirt, walked into the bookstore, making the bell on the door chime as she entered foot-first with her Mary Jane black heels. Naturally, she had on accessories as well, little pearl earrings and a matching bracelet. The day Petunia met her, she had assumed that Venutia was from London. She certainly looked cosmopolitan. What could she possibly be doing in a dingy little bookstore in industrial Cokeworth of all places? It seemed beneath her.

Petunia wasn’t sure if Venutia noticed her. She hadn’t looked at the counter, had gone straight to the shelves. It occurred to Petunia that if Venutia didn’t purchase anything, and instead just browsed and left, then she wouldn’t get the chance to speak with her again. Although, if she was in Cokeworth, then it was quite possible Petunia might run into her somewhere else.

The grey-eyed girl duly noted that Venutia was looking in the poetry section. Even if she wouldn’t get to talk with her again, she got a bit of a thrill at the idea of getting to judge the beautiful woman’s taste in books, and possibly silently sneer at her if her taste proved poor. Petunia knew putting others down to prop herself up was a cheap thing to do but it was by far her favorite vice.

The brunette picked up a hardcover, leatherbound copy of Tennyson poems. There was nothing good or bad Petunia could say about that, it was a classic, neutral choice and that copy in particular was quite splendid, if not a bit expensive. 

To Petunia’s surprise, Venutia brought the book to the counter to buy. The woman looked up, revealing her eyes from under her hat and showing a shocked and delighted expression. 

“Petunia! What a coincidence, of all the places to run into you again.” She laughed melodiously.

The Evans girl was suddenly overcome by this strange feeling that the encounter wasn’t such a coincidence after all but she brushed it off. “Venutia, right? Thank you again for helping me that day in…” She didn’t want to say “Diagon Alley” as she was so opposed to speaking or even thinking about the magical world. Uttering the names, she felt, made the magic real. Words had power in that way.

Venutia seemed to understand her hesitation and nodded, not saying the name either, as if she understood Petunia’s thought process or felt the same way herself maybe.

“I wanted to introduce you to my family, invite you to walk with us, but you disappeared so quickly.” Petunia continued.

“I’m so sorry about that. It must have seemed rather rude of me but I urgently needed to finish my errands and I too get a bit skittish when I have to stay in, well, you know, places like that too long. Besides, you seemed so safe and happy once your family arrived, I didn’t want to interrupt and I figured you were alright then.” She smiled delicately.

The younger blonde girl returned the smile. “Oh, I see. Well, please don’t worry about it then. It wasn't rude at all, I was just a bit disappointed because I appreciated your company that day.”

“As I, yours” Venutia returned the sentiment.

“I hoped I would meet you again but I never expected that if I did, it would be at my part-time job at this dingy little bookshop in Cokeworth. You don’t live in Cokeworth, do you?” The blonde girl’s grey-ish blue eyes were wide in wonder.

“No, I don’t live in Cokeworth, but I grew up here, well near here.”

Petunia’s curiosity was piqued even more now.

“I wouldn’t have expected that.” She said, and then quickly added, “I mean that as a compliment.”

Venutia laughed her alluring laugh again. “To tell you the truth Petunia, I didn’t have you pegged as a Cokeworth or mill-town girl either. I assumed you lived in the heart of London.”

The blonde girl beamed with pride and excitement at hearing this. “Funny you say that, because I’m graduating this month and my plan is to move to London as soon as possible and get a job as a receptionist or typist there.”

“You don’t say! Petunia, I live in London now. Perhaps you have relations there who can help you but whether you do or do not, I would be happy, honored even to be one of your first friends in the big city.”

Petunia’s lackluster grey eyes suddenly lit up. “I don’t know anyone in London actually. I would be incredibly grateful for your help in getting settled, and I imagine, if we live in the same city, we could go for tea from time to time.”

“Ahem” A middle-aged man coughed and Petunia realized that she and Venutia had been chatting for too long and holding up other customers.

“What time do you finish your shift today?” The brunette asked.

“Five o’ clock” Petunia answered, while looking at the clock and realizing it was currently 4:50.”

“Well, you better ring me up and finish up with the rest of the customers and then, assuming you don’t have any plans this evening, I’m free and would love to chat with you more freely. Meet me in front of the shop and we can take a walk together, maybe get dinner?”

The blonde girl complied, thinking that her dress-shopping could wait. With cheerful alacrity, she told Venutia she would join her.

“Brilliant!” Venutia flashed her pearly whites in a grin. She then took her book, in it’s brown paper packaging. “I always buy a book or two when I visit this area. There’s not much to do around here and I like supporting the local shops. Tennyson is one of my favorite poets and this copy in particular is so gorgeous. Have you read "The Lady of Shalott?" It’s terribly sad but oddly, it gives me hope.”

Petunia shook her head no but noted that she would get around to reading that one.

A little after 5, the young woman finished her shift and found Venutia waiting outside, leaning against the store window, reading her newly purchased poetry collection. The older brunette looked up from the page she was so absorbed in and flashed her usual, friendly smile.

“Nice evening, isn’t it? Shall we take a walk around?” She suggested, and Petunia nodded and so the two began to stroll together, up and down the mostly dead streets and empty shops. The whole time Petunia was imagining the two of them strolling through London together and couldn’t believe how soon that reality might come to pass. This strange yet proper and elegant woman with a connection to yet disdain for the magical world, just like her, seemed heaven sent.

The conversation as they walked flowed incredibly well. Venutia had a way of drawing Petunia out and making her do most of the talking. The younger girl divulged a bit about her family, how her parents were good people but dismissive of her, too naive and trusting of the magical world, too easily impressed by her younger sister. She felt ignored and not taken seriously at home and outside of the home, she had no one to discuss these issues with, leading her to feeling tense a lot of the time. Lily, her little sister, was a trusting and kind-hearted sort of person but hot-headed, competitive and a bit of a braggart as well. She felt her sister secretly liked showing her up and took delight in being the favorite. She also felt the girl meddled too much in other’s affairs and lacked self-control. 

The conversation went from Petunia’s family, to magic, which she never discussed, partially because she pretended it didn’t exist half the time and partially because of the issue of usually not having a like-minded person to discuss the issue with, to life in London, getting a job, working life, and then to books and school and hobbies and interests. 

Petunia learned that Venutia was twenty-one, four years older than her, maybe three and a half, depending on when her birthday was and she thought that was a great age gap for siblings. She often felt the year and a half between her and Lily was too close, making her jealousy towards the perfect witch even more fervent.

They must have been walking and talking for thirty minutes before they made their way to the park Petunia always played at with Lily as a child. She still went for walks there, loving the open field and the big, spindly trees. For another thirty minutes or so, the two young women were sitting in the swings, the same ones Petunia and Lily would swing in when they were children, where Petunia had first seen the extent of Lily’s “otherness,” her “freakishness” because the girl had quite literally went flying out of the swing. Petunia could hear her girlhood voice in her head. “How does she do it?” Always that longing. She sighed wistfully, looking at the ground.

It was then that Venutia cleared her throat. “It’s a bit personal and I didn’t want to delve too deeply into it today but I’m thinking that maybe I should.”

The Evans girl looked up, cocking her head in curiosity at whatever it was that her cosmopolitan older friend wanted to share with her.

“I grew up near here but not with my family. I grew up in an orphanage. Can you guess why?”

The younger girl looked perturbed and alarmed. “An...an orphanage? I’m so sorry, but what do you mean can I guess why? There’s only one reason why a child would be in an orphanage, it’s because their parents…” She trailed off, too uncomfortable to say the obvious.

“Because their parents are dead.” Venutia completed her sentence and then quickly pressed on. “But my parents aren’t dead and I have siblings who grew up with them.”  
If Petunia had looked perturbed and alarmed before, the look she had on her face now was even beyond that. “Pardon me?” Why would Venutia have grown up in an orphanage if her parents were still alive and had other children they were raising.

“Do you know what happens to squibs born to pureblood witches and wizards who believe in blood supremacy and magical supremacy?”

Again, the blonde’s dull grey eyes popped and filled with emotion. She even put her hand on her mouth, as if she were watching a film and processing the plot twist. “Oh no, you don’t mean… you can’t mean…”

Venutia nodded solemnly to confirm the girl’s worst suspicions. “I know I do not know your family personally, Petunia and I fully believe you when you speak of their neglect, but you and I both know there was deep concern and love in their eyes when they found you in Diagon alley. Being rejected from the magical world because you’re not magical is one thing but being rejected from your own family, is another.”

Petunia remembered how she felt when she first met Venutia and learned about squibs, that thrilling sense of schadenfreude she had gotten, that someone might have it worse than her, now that feeling was replaced by a piercing guilt. Ever since she had discovered that Lily was special and she was not, she pitied herself and slowly started drowning in that pity. She let it consume her entire adolescence. She thought not getting to go to Hogwarts was the worst fate and had resigned herself to a mundane life of material pleasures only. And now; here she was, face to face with someone who had been truly rejected in a way Petunia could not understand, and yet still this rejected, abandoned woman in front of her was still so open and so tender in her ways. How could that be?

“I’m so sorry, Venutia. That’s terrible.”

“It is a terrible thing my family did but don’t be sorry for me. I’ve carved out quite a nice life for myself. I hope you’ll do the same for yourself. You’re a really bright girl, Petunia. I think you’ll really excel in London.”

Petunia smiled like she was being praised for the first time in her life.

There was a long silence and then Petunia spoke. “No wonder you hate witches and wizards too. You have even more of a reason than I do.”

Venutia looked curious. “I think you might be projecting your own feelings onto me. I never said I hate witches and wizards. I said, I don’t like spending too much time in the magical world, and that is true, for obvious reasons, but I hold no hatred in my heart. What my family did was terrible but it in no way reflects on all witches or wizards. Besides, it was a wizard who saved me and I am forever indebted to him.” The faintest shade of pink painted Venutia’s face as she said the last part.

Petunia cringed at the thought of being forever indebted to a wizard, that sounded worse than death at wand point. Feeling that Venutia had shared enough for one evening, Petunia did not press on and ask her to explain what she meant by being saved by or indebted to a wizard.

Suddenly, the younger girl’s stomach grumbled.

“Oh, are you hungry? We could grab dinner.” 

“No, I think that was just the sound of digestion. I ate a large lunch.” This was a blatant lie, as Petunia had just eaten an apple at breakfast and nothing for lunch. Recently, more and more, the pale blonde was growing tired of herself and her ways, tired of being petty and bitter and jealous, tired of starving herself as a coping mechanism or just to prove a point, tired of striving for ordinary perfection. She wondered now, if she was reaching her breaking point, if she was ready to just give it all up now. She sensed a change taking place inside of herself, a bulb of hope and confidence beginning to bloom.

“Perhaps we should call it an evening then.” Venutia said, as she took paper and a pen out of her hand and began to scribble something down. “Here, this is my address in London.” She had stopped staying in hotels and had started renting a flat, knowing what the next step in her plan was. “Please feel free to write to me anytime. I’m serious about helping you get started out in the city and being friends if you move there, which I have no doubt you will.”

Touched, Petunia took the paper, promising that she would write very soon. “So, I’m guessing you’ll be going back to London this weekend then?”

“Yes, tomorrow. I’m not sure when I’ll be back in the Cokeworth area but I’ll be sure to let you know next time I come. Hopefully we can keep in touch through letters and perhaps meet again face to face in the near future.”

The normally grumpy, dissatisfied seventeen-year-old looked incredibly pleased and delighted by the prospect of further communication with her cool, older new friend.

This time around, the two gave each other a proper goodbye and later that night, Petunia went to bed feeling a lot lighter than usual.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading ^.^  
> In the next chapter, Venutia will again make contact with Severus!
> 
> Also, the portion of this chapter that deals with Petunia's memories and is italicized pretty much comes word for word from DH, but I added one line from the movie ("she's jealous because you're special and she's ordinary) and I added some of my own descriptive sentences to give the sense that Petunia is reflecting on those memories.
> 
> And the two poems quoted are poems from Sylvia Plath's _Colossus_
> 
> I'm a sucker for quoting poems and song lyrics (if the title of this work doesn't already show that haha)


	5. Another Meeting in Cokeworth (and a meeting in the present)

_Dear Petunia,_

_I can’t believe it’s only been a month since we met again so serendipitously at that bookshop and started writing to each other. The time sure does fly! I’m keeping my fingers crossed that you land that coveted typist position at LBC Holdings. In the meantime, don’t hesitate to keep me posted on day to day life in Cokeworth; I’m always happy to lend an ear and offer any advice I can as a young working woman myself._

_Speaking of Cokeworth, I should probably let you know, on the off chance we serendipitously run into each other again, I will be in town at the end of this month. Unfortunately, I can’t make any plans to meet though, as I’ll be too busy, but still, I thought you might appreciate knowing that. Hopefully another time soon, we can meet again in person._

_All the Best,  
Venutia_

Venutia Spindle had made contact with Petunia Evans for the second time in June. It was now July. The boy, Severus Snape, was most certainly home from Hogwarts now, for the summer break. It was time for Venutia to make contact with him again. Venutia let Petunia know that she would be in Cokeworth, in case they really did run into each other, but she prayed - that on the off chance that they did run into each other- it wouldn’t be when she was with Severus. It was too early for the three of them to meet together. The plan to bring Petunia Evans and Severus Snape together was delicate, uncertain and would require a great deal of time and easing into.

“A slow-burn, enemies-friends-lovers romance.” Venutia snorted, thinking and laughing about how absurd the whole scheme was and yet this time-traveling, matchmaking business had become her job in earnest. How quickly one’s job title can change, she mused. The young woman couldn’t believe how simultaneously fast and slow this unusual mission of hers was moving. She tried not to ponder the possible consequences too much, especially the possible consequences in the case that everything went wrong and she couldn’t fulfill the prophecy. 

The weight of the world was really on her shoulders, the shoulders of a mere twenty-one year old squib.  
Well, Harry Potter was a mere baby when he defeated Voldemort, and a mere seventeen-year old when he defeated him a second time. But he had help hadn’t he? 

Venutia was alone in this. Technically, Alabaster was her partner in the whole thing (well, her boss, really…) but seeing as he wasn’t actually travelling back in time with her, she was, for all intents and purposes, alone. Daunting didn’t even begin to describe how it felt every morning she woke up in the past, inserting herself into the lives of people she wasn’t supposed to have anything to do with.

Today was an especially daunting day. Venutia easily connected with Petunia and enjoyed the relationship she was building up with her. She could have easily fooled herself into thinking they were friends and that she saw her as a younger sister, instead of a “subject” in an “experiment” so to speak. 

While the first interaction with Severus had gone well, she thought - after all she did know a lot about him and frankly she could connect with him on an intellectual level - she still dreaded making contact with him. He proved a lot trickier than the girl. 

The boy was a prodigy, gifted, which wasn’t to say Petunia wasn’t sharp because she certainly was, and the girl had moxie, Venutia liked that, but Severus had a level of cunning that was penetrating and even more protective thorns around him than the jaded Evans sister. Venutia had to be extra cautious and guarded around him. If she did anything to arouse his suspicion, then the relationship she hoped to build would be over before it even started, sending her entire plan down the toilet. Gaining his trust, gaining the trust of any Slytherin worth their salt, was not a task to be taken lightly.

Thank Merlin, Venutia was a Spindle. “I may not have the magic, but I have the blood.” She thought. Severus Snape, thorny, enigmatic and talented as he may be, was no match for a Spindle.

_____________________________________________________________________

For once in young Severus Snape’s life, things seemed to be going well, or at least not terribly.

It was the end of July. He had been back home from Hogwarts for a little over a month now. Normally, he hated returning to the muggle world, especially to the barren town of Cokeworth, and even more especially to foul-smelling, poverty-stricken Spinner’s End. But this summer was different. Life at home, with mother, had been different since spring break. 

Tobias Snape had not returned since abandoning the family in the spring and no signs suggested that he would. It seemed the bloody bastard was gone forever. Good riddance.

Severus was shocked when he arrived on platform 9 ¾ and his mother was there to greet him. Just a few months with Tobias gone had a marked improvement on her behavior and demeanor. At long last, Eileen Prince had gotten some time and space to heal and Merlin knew she needed a great deal of those two things. Severus mourned for all the years she was absent in his life, not because of any callousness or apathy on her part, but because of the immense strain Tobias’s abuse had put on her. It was understandable, but painful nonetheless. Still, she was trying to make up for it now and Severus appreciated her efforts.

He could rest easy, returning to Hogwarts for his final year, knowing his mother was safe at home. Now that Eileen was beginning to shed the shell she had been hiding under for years, becoming a person again, Severus wouldn’t be surprised if she decided to show up at his graduation and he smiled at the thought. No matter what trials and tribulations he would face in his final year at school, he could rest a little easier knowing that his mum had such a huge weight off her shoulders.

In the past month, Severus had gotten to enjoy true peace and relaxation. It was still a bit boring and lonely in Cokeworth, especially without Lily, whom he tried not to think about. But he had a routine. He cooked and ate all his meals with Eileen. He also brewed potions and practiced magic with her. Now that Tobias was gone, she had finally returned to using her wand again, although the wand had never meant as much to Eileen as Severus as the cauldron did, for it was the cauldron where the real magic happened. 

Most teenage boys would not enjoy spending time at home with their mums but for Severus, this was both the first and probably last summer that he could savor being his mother’s child. Although his fondest childhood memories were moments spent in the kitchen with Eileen, learning about the magical world, those memories were also tainted by Tobias always barging, drunk, angry or both. 

Aside from those bonding moments with Eileen, Severus had mostly been neglected and had to fend for himself. Then, next summer he would be a Hogwarts graduate and a fully-fledged adult wizard. While he worried about his post-graduation prospects, he knew he had talent, and so didn’t see himself staying at this cruddy house in Spinner’s End for long. Surely, he would find a job or apprenticeship and then get his own flat, or even home maybe. 

He worried about Eileen being by herself, but part of him hoped that he would one day be able to buy a new place for her too. Maybe they could live near each other in Godric’s Hollow. It was hard for Severus to imagine his future life outside of the work sphere. 

For a long time, he had imagined a future with Lily, but he had ruined that. He didn’t just blame himself though. Although she didn’t know the full details of the werewolf incident, Lily had still victim-blamed him about it and acted as if bloody James Potter had done him some kind of kindness when the asshole was very much just saving his own skin. Lily, like everyone else, had treated him like he was overreacting and he had not appreciated that at all. 

While he mourned for his old friend, and probably always would, he had finally stopped putting the muggle-born girl on a pedestal and accepted that she wasn’t really right for him romantically. Of course, accepting that fact didn’t make him any less resentful of the girl’s budding romance with said asshole James Potter, but that wasn’t so much about jealousy, as it was about betrayal. How could a girl like Lily go for an arrogant prat like Potter? How could his former best friend date his bully? This knowledge of their relationship made him more than a little disillusioned with the red-headed girl.

Even when Severus had imagined a post-Hogwarts life with Lily, the two running their own apothecary or doing some potions-related work, it was hard for him to imagine what their domestic life would be like or having children. Severus knew Eileen would love grandchildren but considering his own volatile upbringing and relationship with his father, he winced a bit at the thought of filling the father role himself and truth be told, he didn’t really like children, at all. Perhaps he would feel differently about his own but it was hard to picture.

Sev, who was lounging on his bed, lazily knocking flies down from the ceiling with his wand, shook his head. It was depressing thinking about his future family life when he was almost seventeen and still hadn’t even had his first kiss yet. He groaned, knocking more flies down.

When he wasn’t cooking or studying magic with Eileen (or overthinking in his bedroom while mindlessly performing magic, as he was doing now) Severus, to his shame as a wanna-be pureblood wizard of status, worked a thankless part-time muggle job as a gas station attendant. He had no choice. He needed to support himself and his mother while he was home and it was much easier to get a job in the muggle world as a teenager than in the magical world.

The irony of Severus, who often had the insult “greasy bat” flown his way, getting covered in grease and sweat at a gas station, was not lost on him and it made him resent the job and his circumstances even more. 

When he wasn’t doing degrading muggle labor (which he would never ever tell his peers in Slytherin about) Sev spent all his free time going for long walks and reading. The library was his second home. He may have not been keen on muggles and their lifestyles but that didn’t stop him from reading muggle literature. He once told Lily that blood didn’t matter, well good writing was good writing and the author didn’t matter either.

Feeling restless and having a lot of free time because it was his day off today, Severus decided he would take another trip to the library. He always had books that needed returning and that was a good excuse to scour for more books he hadn’t read yet or old favorites he’d like to read again. The park where Severus had met Lily and the library, although limited, were the only good places in Cokeworth.

Before leaving, Severus gathered the books to return, putting them all in a beaten up rucksack. The pile included the usual tragic Russian novelists he always found himself drawn to - Dostoevksy and Tolstoy for example, as well as a smattering of various poetry. Poe’s _The Tell-Tale Heart_ and _The Raven_ were in the pile, along with _Selected Poems of Pablo Neruda_ , and a third book that had fallen on the floor, a collection called _Ariel_ by Sylvia Plath.

Plath was a renowned poet but that wasn’t why Severus had checked out her collection. Actually, embarrassingly, he hadn’t really known about her or her work before. But her name stood out to him, it sounded like silver, it evoked a Slytherin-esque aesthetic, as did the title of the collection. 

Not to mention the name had made him realize that he had been almost exclusively reading male authors. That wasn’t intentional. The disparity between his real life- in which he hated his father, had grown up wanting to emulate his mother, wanting to reclaim his maternal Prince heritage, had been best friends with a girl, and was often bullied, harassed and treated most foully by those of the same gender - and his reading life that was dominated by men, struck him. Another irony. Well, he would be more conscious of that and try to expand his literary horizons.

He had quite liked the Plath poems. They were raw. Actually, he wondered if Plath was a witch or a squib who had integrated into muggle society. She was clearly writing about magic, about wizards and potions and what not in many of her poems and in a way that hit too close to home to be a mere coincidence. Apparently the poor woman had stuck her head in an oven. Was she driven to madness by her muggle husband like his own mother almost had been? Severus shuddered at the thought.

Despite his discomfort, he found himself leafing through the book again. He liked the title poem “Ariel” and another one called “Tulips” the best and he wanted to read them, absorb them one more time before bringing the book back. He re-read “Ariel” once and then found himself stuck on “Tulips,” like he didn’t want to part with the poem just yet.

_...I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted  
To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.  
How free it is, you have no idea how free——  
The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,  
And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets.  
It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them  
Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet. _

_The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me.  
Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe  
Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby.  
Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds.  
They are subtle : they seem to float, though they weigh me down,  
Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their color,  
A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck._

_Nobody watched me before, now I am watched.  
The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me  
Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins,  
And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow  
Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips,  
And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself.  
The vivid tulips eat my oxygen._

_Before they came the air was calm enough,  
Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss.  
Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise.  
Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river  
Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine.  
They concentrate my attention, that was happy  
Playing and resting without committing itself._

_The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves.  
The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals;  
They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat,  
And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes  
Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.  
The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea,  
And comes from a country far away as health._

The tulips were intruders weren’t they? So red, so bright, so garish, keeping the speaker, the writer, the patient, whoever, from lying in peace. Severus understood, he had been both distracted and disturbed by flowers too many times to count.

For him, there were no tulips, but that didn’t mean he had been given a respite - life had dealt him a lily and a petunia instead, and both had tortured him in their own way. 

It had been over a year and would soon be two years since Severus severed his friendship with Lily Evans, thanks to letting that awful slur slip from his mouth. Losing her because of his own inanity felt like a wound that would never heal.

But sometimes...he wondered if it was for the best.

In the poetic world of _Ariel_ , black and white were the reigning colors. Whenever red, representing blood, the heart and living, seeped in, it was always an intrusion, a blemish on the page. The red tulips, in their glory and boldness, signified a glaring otherness.

Lily, like the tulips, was beautiful, glorious and bold and that made her other to someone like Severus. He didn’t deserve her, romantically or even as a friend, for he inhabited the black and white world and she belonged in the world of color.

A country as far away as health.

Severus was young and physically healthy and yet that line resonated with him. The boy’s own mind was like a country as far away as health, if the self-inflicted scars on his arms and the trauma of Tobias Snape’s punches and the marauders so-called “pranks” that replayed, unwanted like a horror movie reel, had any say.

People gave flowers to the sick. Why? Flowers are impermeable. If you want the sick to live on, give them something more substantial and lasting.

Severus was too sick for tulips, for lilies….

Petunias...not at all bright or brilliant or glorious like the tulips or lilies, rather common and drab, even for a flower. Severus had thought that, until he discovered all the different varieties of petunias in a book. He appreciated variety, versatility. He took a special liking to the night sky petunia. Compared to the other varieties, it stood out in a splendid way, like a witch among muggles.

He snickered at that thought as images of Lily’s drab older muggle sister, Petunia, came to mind. She certainly was nothing like the night sky petunia. Severus could say worse and he would be justified considering how she had treated him in their youth. She looked down on him for being a wizard, or a “freak” rather and for being poor. She tried to stop Lily from honing her magical talents as well. Petunia was a snob and to put it even more crassly, (but truthfully), a huge bitch.

And yet, wasn’t Petunia where he had first gone wrong in his friendship with Lily? 

Long before he had called Lily a “mudblood,” he had spat “muggle” at Petunia, full of contempt, and although the word was technically a neutral descriptor, not a slur, his intonation when saying it made it no better than mudblood. True, he hadn’t uttered it so spitefully without prompting. It was a response to Petunia’s accusatory and rude way of speaking to him. But that didn’t change the fact that it was a loaded insult, and that throwing the term “muggle” around like that proved to be a precursor to throwing around the much more incendiary “mudblood.”

_“She’s jealous because she’s ordinary and you’re special.” Severus told Lily as he sprawled out in the grass._

_“That’s mean, Severus.” Lily chided him, always coming to the defense of those close to her._

Insulting Petunia and her muggle status pretty much amounted to insulting Lily herself, Severus realized now.

Even though he knew it upset Lily, he had continued to do it. Long before he himself severed his relationship with Lily, he had severed the relationship between the Evans’ sisters, hadn’t he? In the act of pitting the two sisters against each other and excluding Petunia, he had given fuel to Petunia’s growing resentment and envy. It was fine if Petunia hated him, but he would never forgive himself for her hatred of Lily, her own sister.

As much as he detested Petunia, he still looked back on the letter incident and the Hogwarts Express incident with nothing but shame.

It had been his idea to sneak into Petunia’s room with Lily and go through her personal things. To this day, he still didn’t know why he had a compulsion to do that. After all, hadn’t he told her “I wouldn’t spy on you anyway, you’re just a muggle.” And yet, whenever he found himself in Lily’s house, the temptation to mess with her wicked muggle sister always taunted him. Maybe he wanted to give her what she expected? You want a wizard who can’t mind his own business, I’ll give you a wizard who can’t mind his own business then.

He had been shocked, to see that Dumbledore, one of the greatest wizards of all time and the headmaster of Hogwarts, had written to her, had replied to a letter that she sent him.

How did she send a letter to Dumbledore? Definitely not by owl. There had to be wizards working in the muggle post office who handled that sort of thing. But why would they even bother forwarding her pathetic letter to Dumbledore and why would Dumbledore dignify her with a response? He had been utterly flabbergasted by such a sequence of events. Looking back now, however, it made sense to him that someone like Dumbledore would respond to such a letter and as dumb as it was for Petunia, non-magical Petunia, to try to attend Hogwarts, was her action at such a young age not admirable to some degree? 

Severus could see now that she had just wanted to share something with her sister, and to his shock, he felt sympathy for her. How could he not? Ironically, Hogwarts separated Severus from Lily as well. He had been so excited to attend school with his best friend and then when they got there, she was sorted into Gryffindor and he was sorted into Slytherin - rival houses, and from there the wedge between them only continued to grow.

Before they even reached the school grounds however, the long awaited train ride there had not turned out to be the glorious journey Severus had imagined, but instead a foreboding nightmare.

_“I don’t want to talk to you,” Lily said in a constricted voice._

_“Why not?” the boy asked._

_“Tuney h-hates me. Because we saw that letter from Dumbledore.”_

_“So what?”_

_She threw him a look of deep dislike._

_“So she’s my sister!”_

_“She’s only a-” He caught himself quickly; Lily, too busy trying to wipe her eyes without being noticed, did not hear him._

He understood now what he didn’t understand then, as a child. For most people family meant something, family was important. 

“She’s only a muggle,” he was going to say, but to Lily she was so much more than that, she was her sister, she was her blood. That connection alone made Petunia special in her eyes.

Severus felt a little sick, thinking about how easy it was to separate people, through magical heritage and non-magical heritage, through stupid school houses even, and then he felt sick for getting so sentimental.

When he graduated he would have to choose a path, and he knew the Death Eaters from Slytherin house were waiting for him with open arms. He had a year to contemplate more where he stood.

He didn’t have many options.

__________________________________________________________________

Venutia Spindle walked into Cokeworth Library with a bundle of books to return. She had really read the books she checked out, they were something to keep her entertained in her down time, when she wasn’t planning and plotting. It was convenient that the boy, a young man rather, spent so much time here. Just like the book shop, it was an easy place to make contact in a seemingly not suspicious way. 

He would be shocked to see her, the woman he had pegged as a pureblood witch (and he wasn’t far off the mark), whom he had met in Knockturn Alley, discussing potions, at the public library in Cokeworth of all places. When she explained that she was from around the area, he would be shocked yet again. She wouldn’t reveal the whole truth like she had with the girl, she would let him make assumptions. He would probably assume that she was a half-blood like him, from humble beginnings as well.

The books Venutia borrowed from the library included some Shakespeare comedies, and some bilingual editions of French and Spanish poetry, including Baudelaire and Lorca. Alabaster Thistle was right, she devoured fiction, but for a political activist, she was always woefully behind when it came to current events and keeping up with the news. This mission and spending so much time in the past at least gave her an excuse.

Out of the corner of her eye, Venutia spotted Severus Snape, who had already returned his books and was now browsing in a nearby shelf. Somehow, she knew that he would look up and see her at the counter, and he did.  
_____________________________________________________

Severus had been leafing through murder mystery novels when, by chance, he looked up and spotted someone he had been wondering about for the past few months and whom he would never expect to see in the muggle world, let alone in Cokeworth, at the rundown public library of all places. What the hell was Venutia Spindle, he remembered the name of the brilliant and beautiful potions whiz, doing here?

After returning her books, he noticed that she was leaving. It was not like Severus to chase after a stranger and that wasn’t what he was going to do, instead he would leave too and hope that she would see and recognize him.

Venutia smirked to herself as she walked out and heard footsteps behind her. Petunia and Severus were both drawn to her, so clearly she was doing a good job so far. In only a split second, she turned around and made eye contact with the scrawny, disheveled (and truth be told, sallow and greasy) young man. Venutia didn’t want to change Petunia or Severus in order to bring them together, that would be disingenuous, but she did want to instill some more confidence in both of them before having them meet again. 

They were both anxious and you could see it in the way they carried themselves. Severus had a twitchy, nervous way of walking, he reminded Venutia of a gangly spider. Petunia, on the other hand, who should be holding her head high with that gorgeous long neck of hers, was always looking down instead, like a shrinking violet or a wilting rose. Venutia knew part of that awkwardness just came with youth, but she also knew that in their case, a big part of it came from unresolved self-esteem issues and inferiority complexes.

The young squib woman shook her head, thinking not for the first time that what these two needed was not a time-traveling squib like herself, but a therapist. Before she could even get to making them fall in love with each other, she would need to make them fall in love with themselves. 

“Hey, you’re the Hogwarts student I met in Mr. Mulpepper’s Apothecary in Knockturn Alley a while back! Severus, was it? How strange to run into you in the muggle world and in Cokeworth of all places!” Venutia exclaimed.

The young man looked taken aback. Although he was hoping Venutia would notice him and remember him, he didn’t want her to think that he had followed her out purposely, which is exactly what he had done. But she seemed so pleasantly surprised by his appearance that his anxiety evaporated.

He wasn’t sure what to say to her first, as so many thoughts swam in his head. She was surprised to see him in the muggle world, in Cokeworth. Well, he was equally surprised to see her here, but he also realized that he didn’t know her and only held assumptions about her.

“I...yes, I’m Severus. You’re Venutia, right? I remember what you said, in the shop that day, about brewing Draught of Living Death. I tried the textbook version and your version. Yours was superior. I was really impressed. Thank you for that tip.”

“You’re welcome. I’m happy to hear that!” Venutia smiled. 

“I…” Severus mentally kicked himself over his incessant stuttering. He really needed to kick that habit before graduation if he wanted to be taken seriously as an adult wizard. “It’s strange but rather fortunate to run into you again. People who modify established potions recipes, and actually improve upon them, are quite rare. I want to be a potioneer...maybe….I’m interested in many fields of magic actually” - he couldn’t tell her about his affinity for the dark arts, his other love after potions but that’s what came to mind - “but potions allow for the most ingenuity and creativity I think, it’s like a science and an art. Er, sorry, you know that already and I’m rambling but all of that to say, if you’re not in a hurry, I would quite like to learn more from someone clearly so advanced in the field.”

“Earnest and eager, the consummate student!” The older woman proclaimed. “I’m not in a hurry at all, actually and I would be both humbled and honored to share my potions knowledge with you. It is absolutely the most innovative field of magic I think, but due to its complexity, not many people can appreciate it on a deeper level. We potioneers need to stick together and share our knowledge, don’t you think.” It was more of a statement than a question. “The park is near here, we could go for a walk or find a bench maybe.”

Severus looked at her intently and found his nerves returning. She had on a floral sundress that was weather appropriate and although not particularly revealing, certainly emphasized her natural beauty and flawless olive skin tone. The matching flower clip in her hair brought attention back to the long brown curls that cascaded all the way down to her waist. Severus was genuinely interested in talking about potions with her but there was also a part of his brain that could not fathom the fact that he was about to take a walk in Cokeworth with an attractive witch, an attractive witch who did not know him as the loser he was both at home and at school, but as a promising potential potioneer. Maybe this summer really was the start of a positive turning point in his life.

“A kind, beautiful witch with a knack for potions,” Severus’s mind immediately filled up with images of a certain emerald-eyed redhead. “No.” He told himself. He needed to let her go.

Venutia did not tell Severus that she was a squib or that she came from a pure-blood family, but did say that she lived in London and visited Cokeworth sometimes because she grew up nearby. Severus was not one to hound acquaintances with personal questions so he did not press her on that. Besides, the conclusion was obvious. 

If she grew up in or around Cokeworth, then she was definitely not a pureblood but she had mentioned potions being a family business, so she certainly wasn’t muggleborn then. She had to be of mixed heritage, a half-blood like him. Although Severus resented his blood status, the fact that Venutia was the same as him, in all probability, endeared her more to him. She wouldn’t look down on him and could relate to him on a certain level. They were kindred souls in more ways than one. 

Time did not seem to pass as the two spoke so comfortably with one another, Severus again, getting over his initial nerves rather quickly. They discussed London, Cokeworth, potions and various other branches of magical learning, books from the library that they had recently read, their favorites from both magical literature and muggle literature, and so on.

Despite her beauty, their common interests and ease in talking, Severus got a strong feeling of being around a teacher or a mentor - was this what having an older sibling would be like? - in Venutia’s presence, and that was probably for the better. He would like to stay in touch with her. Really, he would just like anyone, well anyone with a brain cell - to talk with. He knew his senior year would be lonely. Merlin knew he needed a friend like a poisoned person needed a bezoar.

“I can’t wait to escape this muggle hell-hole.” He said at one point, when discussing his impending graduation and entrance into wizarding society as a full-fledged, educated adult wizard.

Venutia scrunched her nose a bit. “Cokeworth isn’t the city of dreams. I get that. However, I hope you’re not implying anything negative about muggles. If you’re from here, then you must have muggle relatives so I’d be surprised if that’s what you meant- though I suppose you wouldn’t be the first self-loathing half blood I’ve met- “ there was venom in her tone as she said that, “but considering what’s going on in the wizarding world right now” - she was clearly referring to the rise of the dark lord and his anti-muggles and muggleborns agenda - “I want to be careful who I associate myself with.”

Severus took a step back, startled. He had flashbacks to the incident at the lake, when he had been strung upside down in the air, had his pants removed, had everyone laughing and pointing at him, and worst of all, had not appreciated the one person who came to his defense…

He’d be lying if he said he had any kind thoughts about muggles but he didn’t want to make the same mistake he had made with Lily. He liked and respected Venutia and wanted to be in her good graces. The self-loathing half-blood comment did strike a nerve. He preferred not to confront that reality about himself.

“I didn’t mean it like that.” Severus lied. “Muggle society is...fine. It’s just not for me. I fit in better in the wizarding world. People can live as they please but personally I don’t understand wizards and witches who choose to integrate into the muggle world.”

The look on Venutia’s face was measured and inscrutable. She had that intense gaze Severus himself often had when he was using legilimency but he would know if she was using legilimency and she clearly wasn’t.

Then, suddenly, her intense look turned into melodic laughter and now Severus had an inscrutable look on his face because he could not for the life of him understand what was so funny.

“Sorry, I just, I’ve come to find it amusing, the idea that there’s a muggle world and a wizarding world, as if they’re separate planets or something. The separation between the two doesn’t really exist does it? It’s just an illusion really.”

Severus had to hold himself back from scoffing at her. “Of course it’s just an illusion but only us magical folk are privy to that fact. For muggles, we might as well be living in an entirely different universe, forget planet even.”

Venutia sighed and averted his gaze, shaking her head a little at the ground. “It’s an oversimplification but I guess you’re not entirely incorrect.” She acquiesced slightly to his point. 

There was a long stretch of silence but eventually the two returned to polite, agreeable conversation.

When the sun began setting, signifying the switch from afternoon to evening, Venutia offered Severus the same thing she had offered Petunia - keeping in touch through letters. Severus, who was desperate for some kind of relationship to keep him from going crazy his senior year, consented and cheerfully (as cheerfully as sour, sad Severus Snape could muster) gave her his contact information. 

It was perfect. He could definitely confide in someone who didn’t go to Hogwarts, who hadn’t seen him in his most embarrassing, vulnerable moments, an outsider of sorts, and one who shared his passions and his blood-status - even if she was a bit too keen on muggles for his liking - but he wasn’t about to let that one small detail get in the way of an otherwise potentially life-changing relationship. Who knew, maybe with her connections to the potion industry, she could help him snag a decent apprenticeship straight out of Hogwarts, that would be a dream come true. Either way, he looked forward to debating potions modifications with her and talking about their favorite books. It was just the sort of good distraction he needed.

_________________________________________________________________________

Stage One of the plan completed.

Venutia had done it, she had gotten on a letter-writing basis with both Petunia and Severus.

From here on, the plan would move solidly but slowly. She would spend a year writing to them. Naturally, she would end up closer with Petunia, since she would be helping the girl move to London and therefore see her in person as well, whereas Severus had a whole year of school left.

A whole year to build up trust and a relationship and when the year ended, the hard part would come, forcing the two into each other’s lives somehow, and then the herculean part would come - making them like each other somehow? If the prophecy was correct, then they should have that natural connection that comes from deep within, that will draw them together, but Venutia was skeptical of the way the subject of divination treated love and connection. The whole plan - from the time turner to this matchmaker business - felt like one giant experiment, and what if it was?

Venutia had been so busy with her mission, that aside from her once a month visits to the present to report back to Alabaster, she hadn’t met with anyone else. She decided to change that. The mission was classified so she couldn’t discuss it with anyone but that didn’t mean she couldn’t meet with anyone. Besides, a cup of coffee and idle conversation with a friend was exactly what she needed as she could feel her semi-isolation from staying in the past so often - always cooped up reading books when she wasn’t interacting with the “subjects” because she was too terrified of messing with anything else in that time period - was making her stir crazy.

So, she called up Jasmine and that’s how she found herself at The Roost, a coffee shop and bar, nursing a Baileys one evening as she waited for the twenty-four year old fellow squib and foundation worker.

“Sorry, I’m late” A husky voice called out. Venutia whipped her head around, immediately recognizing Jasmine’s distinct vocal cords. 

Jasmine or Jas as her close friends often called her, wore her black hair in a short boyish fashion with messy side-swept bangs that sometimes got in her dark eyes. Tonight she had on a plaid button-down t-shirt, skinny jeans, and a pair of black and white converse. She blended in well at the admittedly hipster establishment. 

Venutia almost laughed to herself as she realized that in some ways, Jasmine reminded her of a slightly older, lesbian indie version of Severus, assuming the boy grew out of his twitchiness and developed the smooth veneer of confidence that Jas had. Venutia felt certain that he would get there someday, especially with her help. She shook her head a bit, trying not to think of the “subjects” in such a personal way. Investment in the mission was important but any overinvestment could jeopardize the whole scheme.

“Typical Jas, keeping girls waiting, not arriving until they’re already a tad tipsy.” Venutia teased. 

Jas shrugged in response, as if to say, “it is what it is,” and then sat down and ordered a White Russian.

“Thanks for inviting me out, V. It’s been way too long. I’ve really missed our hang-out sessions, especially now since I barely see you at work functions or even in the building anymore. I hear Al’s got you on a top secret mission. I know you can’t disclose anything but I hope you’re staying safe and not overworking yourself.”

Venutia smiled warmly, having missed the company of one of her closest friends too. She had a complicated history with Jas, complicated however, did not necessarily equate to toxic, and what they had was quite the opposite. Jas was safety, unconditional love, she was like a glass of Baileys on a lonely evening.

“I’ve missed you too, Jas. And thanks for your concern. It is a very heavy mission, very time-consuming, I won’t lie, but I promise I’m taking care of myself. That’s why I invited you out tonight. You’re part of my self-care.” Venutia laughed.

Jas grinned and then leaned in a bit, “Look, we all know you’re on the front lines so even if you can’t give details, definitely don’t downplay it.”

Venutia looked at her curiously, tilting her head like she wasn’t in on some secret.

Jas continued grinning and elbowed her playfully. “Don’t play coy. It’s wild isn’t it, but I can’t say I’m surprised. Wizards and witches have been casting us out and treating us like second class citizens since..well since forever...it was only a matter of time until a faction of squibs who want to eradicate magical folk started rising. Sheesh, it’s enough to give you an existential crisis, isn’t it? Like why do we even bother doing what we do when people are always going to indulge in hate and fear and violence? But I’m not even on the front lines on this one. You’re the one who must really be exhausted.”

The twenty-one year old’s eyes widened. Alabaster was right. She could devour multiple books in a day but she, ironically, considering she was a political activist, but especially now since she was spending all her time in the past and thinking about social movements in that time period, was absolutely pathetic at keeping up with current events. 

The slightly older squib, who was good at reading people, especially Venutia, now widened her eyes. “Wait, you really haven’t heard? Oh shit. So, that’s really not the mission you’re working on? Wow. Damn. But still, you need to keep up. These ani-magic squibs are turning into a full on terrorism cell. They bombed a magical center the other day. This could really turn into a full blown war and the only thing worse than a war among muggles is a war among the magical minority and the muggle majority. Don’t even get me started with the statute of secrecy in that scenario, what a nightmare!”

“Are you alright?” Jasmine asked as Venutia seemed to lose the color in her face. The truth was, she was shocked by this news. She had enough problems in the past, she didn’t need problems in the present as well.

“Why doesn’t Al keep you up to date on this stuff? Now I’m really curious what you’re doing for him, as much as I respect the classified nature of whatever it is. I’d ask why you don’t keep yourself up to date but we all know when you’re not out on the streets, you’re living in your own la la land.” Jas teased her again.

“I need another drink,” was all Venutia could say.

“No kidding. Well, this one’s on me.” The older woman ordered a drink for the brunette.

“Thanks, you’re the best.”

Jas’s mood seemed to change, the soft expression in her eyes suddenly became cold and stony.

“Look, I know Al is good or believes in the greater good at least, but that doesn’t cancel out the fact that he’s a master manipulator. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. I know you feel like you owe him because he changed the course of your life but the truth is, you don’t owe him shit. So, if he’s trying to play his games with you, don’t let him. Everyone knows he loves to experiment and that he’ll use people as pawns if need be. You deserve better, V.”

Looking down into her drink, Venutia could feel her own eyes turning stony. “I trust Alabaster and I thought we agreed not to discuss him together anymore, outside of a work related context.”

“Okay, one, I did bring him up in a work related context and two, I just don’t understand why you’re so naive and stubborn anytime someone so much as has a small disagreement with the man. It’s like you can’t take any criticism of him, not even the constructive kind. It’s not healthy. You put him on a pedestal. You do realize that, don’t you? One day the rose-colored glasses are gonna have to come off.” Jas took a quick breath and then continued before Venutia could defend herself, or Alabaster.

“I said he’s good, he is, there’s no question about that but good people can still use and take advantage of others if they believe the ends justify the means and if you were on the outside looking in, you would see that he has you on a treadmill, always wearing you out with his unconventional plans. Also, let me remind you, he’s our boss, not our friend.”

Venutia took a deep breath. This was not the relaxing evening she imagined it would be. “Do you just want me to admit it? That my feelings for him cross a line, that they go beyond work? Is that what you’ve been wanting since we broke up two years ago? What if I did tell you that, what would you say to that?”

Now Jasmine’s face was the one being drained of its color. “Venutia, he’s fifteen years older than you, and that’s just scratching the surface. Get a goddamn grip.”

The younger woman laughed sardonically. “I knew you would think me foolish.”

Jas crossed her arms and shook her head. “I’m just as foolish for having pursued romantic relations with you in the past, a coworker who lives in the same building. And I’m even more foolish for not realizing the obvious - why would you want to be with a woman who’s a squib, who is at the same place in life as you, you’re equal, when you could be with a man who’s a wizard, and older to boot, with money and influence. You’ve always been a social climber.”

“Jas!” Venutia looked like she had been punched in the gut. “That was a low-blow, even for you.” She looked away from her ex, who unfortunately was also her closest friend, and back down into her drink, crestfallen.

The dark-haired woman stood up from her seat and shrugged apathetically, as if to say “it is what it is.” Then she slapped twenty pounds on the table and made her way out.

For the rest of the evening Venutia was forced to sit with the fact that her friendship with Jas was a lot more fragile and delicate than she had realized or would have cared to admit, and for someone who only had chosen family in her life, that was a hard pill to swallow. 

She couldn’t fault Jas for having unrequited feelings for her still and perhaps being jealous, but the claims she had made about Venutia, that she would prefer a man, prefer a wizard, that she was status-obsessed, that crossed a line.

And then there was Alabaster Thistle. Venutia did put all her faith in him. Was _that_ really such a good idea?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading ~
> 
> Ideally, I would like to update my fics once or twice a month, so I apologize that this update took over a month!


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